There is No One Universal Pro-Longevity Gut Microbiome

Evidence suggests that the gut microbiome is influential on long-term health and late life mortality, to perhaps a similar degree as exercise. The various populations of microbial life found in the gut change with age; microbes producing beneficial metabolites are lost, while microbes that provoke chronic inflammation or other issues increase in number. Experiments in short-lived species have shown that transplanting a youthful microbiome into an older individual results in improved health and extended life span. In principle, similar effects could be achieved by some sort of intensive oral probiotic treatment, but that has not yet been demonstrated in animal studies. Researchers have also shown that guiding the immune system to more aggressively attack problem gut microbes can improve the microbiome and its influence on health. In today's open access paper, researchers propose that regional differences in diet mean that there is unlikely to be one optimal gut microbiome to promote longevity. This seems a reasonable prediction, given the degree to which human diet does vary around the world, and the way in which diet interacts with the gut microbiome. It still seems likely that there are universally beneficial changes that one can make to any aged microbiome, in humans or other species, such as enabling the immune system to better remove problem microbes. Early approaches to therapies are likely to involve such universal, narrow improvements; personalized medicine is m...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs