How to Plan and Carry Out a Simple Self-Experiment, a Single Person Trial of Flagellin Immunization

This lengthy post covers the topic of setting up and running a self-experiment, a human trial of a single individual, to assess whether a ten week course of flagellin immunization will significantly and beneficially affect gut microbe populations. Flagellin is the protein making up a flagellum, the appendage that bacteria use to move themselves around. As it happens, the presence of flagellae correlates decently well with harmful gut microbes, and the absence of flagellae correlates decently well with helpful gut microbes. In principle, provoking the immune system into greater efforts to chase down and destroy anything with a flagellum will better manage the microbial populations of the gut. These populations change with age in ways that promote chronic inflammation and reduce the generation of beneficial metabolites. Flagellin has been used in human clinical trials as an adjuvant to improve vaccination efficacy: it is recognized by the immune system, and helps produce a greater immune response. It was shown to have only minimal side effects in those trials. There is no human data for effects on the gut microbiome, but a very interesting paper describes the effects in mice. The outcome is a shifting of the relative population sizes of gut microbes in a beneficial direction that will reduce chronic inflammation. It is unknown as to how long such an effect might last - whether rousing the immune system is a short-term process, or whether it will continue to better guard ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Self-Experimentation Source Type: blogs