The microbes in our guts have been linked to everything from arthritis to autism. Now, scientists say they can even tell us about our future health. Two new studies find that our “microbiome”—the mix of microbes in our gut—can reveal the presence of many diseases better than our own genes can—and can even anticipate our risk of dying within the next 15 years.
“I am hopeful and enthusiastic that the community will reach a point where we’re able to develop microbiome-based therapeutics and diagnostics,” says Samuel Minot, a microbiome researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who was not involved in the research. “I think that this is within the realm of possibility.”
In the first study, researchers reviewed 47 studies looking at associations between the collective genomes of the gut microbes and 13 common diseases. These included schizophrenia, hypertension, and asthma—all of which are considered “complex” because they are caused by both environmental and genetic factors. They then compared these studies with 24 genome-wide association (GWA) studies, which correlate specific human genetic variants with diseases.
Overall, the genetic signature of gut microbes was 20% better at discriminating between a healthy and an ill person than a person’s own genes, the team reports in a paper posted this month on the preprint server bioRxiv.
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