NEWS in SCIENCE
Is Your Gut Giving You A Deadly Disease?
By L.W.
Could you imagine that something so small that you can’t even see it with the naked eye could have such a big impact on your life? These nearly invisible organisms actually have the potential to affect your health negatively. These small organism are called microbes, and they are more abundant than you may think.
Microbes are defined as an object that one can only see with the aid of a microscope. Little does everyone know however, that there are more microbes in our body than we have human cells. There are 300,000,000 microbes per square inch of human skin. Even though that seems like a lot, there are even more microbes in our guts! The microbes that we have in our gut laid out from end to end would reach over 62,135 miles, which is a fourth of the distance to the moon.
These microbial bacteria that live in our guts have been connected to several illnesses such as eye disease and arthritis. Several new studies have provided information that leads us to believe these microbes are also linked to Multiple Sclerosis. Multiple Sclerosis, commonly known as MS is a disease that can lead to weakness of the muscles, blindness, and even death.
Researchers have found that certain gut microbes are more plentiful in patients with MS. The microbes known as Acinetobacter and Akkermansia have been found to be four times as plentiful in patients who had the disease, while the bacteria Parabacteroides were four times as plentiful in patients who did not have the disease.
Another study was done with mice. The mice were injected with microbes from both patients that had and didn’t have MS. The mice that were injected with the microbes from the MS patients received brain inflammation or swelling, while the ones that were injected with microbes from non-MS patients did not suffer the swelling.
These findings are opening the door to a disease that we know little to nothing about. If MS continues to be researched we may find a cure, or even be able to stop the disease all together. Finding a cure for this should be something all Americans should care about because it would potentially save the lives of the 2.5 million people worldwide that are affected by it.
Guglielmi, G. (2017). Gut microbes could help trigger multiple sclerosis. Science. doi:10.1126/science.aap9323. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/09/gut-microbes-could-help-trigger-multiple-sclerosis
Please send any questions or comments to Dr. Spitzer (spitzern@marshall.edu )
Note: Any opinions expressed in these articles are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent those of Dr. Spitzer, the Department of Biological Sciences, or Marshall University.