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MAY 15TH, 2017
The Microbiome: Where Germs Aren’t a Bad Thing
Malawian Twins
And the Magic of Microbes
The fad surrounding the microbiome that frequents recent direct marketing efforts at farmers’ markets may just be the next bout of research concerning human health. Kwashkior disease—a form of severe protein malnutrition—is responsible for almost half the deaths of young children in countries all over the world. This post will discuss the experiment that brought a treatment for Kwashkior to the Third World.
The microbiome is a community of microbes in our bodies and on our skin, each with their own DNA. Their health effects ours in an abundance of ways—from our mood, to our digestion—even the development of disease.
This map from the research of Rob Knight illustrates how our microbes transform from vaginal to gut microbes throughout childhood. Their journey is crucial to our health as humans.
So how does the microbiome come into play here? Thanks to the endeavor launched in 2007, the Human Microbiome Project has trail-blazed a new path towards the end of disease, and may even help prevent cancer. The project in summary is a collection of experiments being conducted in the US, Asia and the EU. The goal is similar to that of the Human Genome Project, but to understand a day in the life of our tiny, mysterious friends, and the tremendous role they play.
One project, and perhaps one of the most impactful, is the connection between poor diet and the health of each individual’s own population of microbes in the gut; the human microbiome. This community of trillions of tiny bacteria has proved to have a great effect on our day-to-day behavior, including mood, mental disorders, and disease, all via the blood-brain barrier. In other words, the kind of food we put into our digestive system has an effect on the health of our microbiological community. These microbes then send signals through our blood to our brain, arguably the most vital organ in our body. As a result, undesirable brain function generates unhealthy microbes, and we become more foul-tempered and even anxious. If these abnormal conditions persist, we become susceptible to things like disease and depression.
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A study with Malawian twins indicates that the health of the microbiome in the gut takes part in the malnutrition of Malawian youth (Kwaskior disease). Many questions about the effect microbes have on our behavior are still unknown, but this experiment is just one recent event that has scientists beginning to investigate the power of our micro friends.
LEARN MORE about the connection between the microbiome and obesity in the second post of “The Microbiome: Where Germs Aren’t a Bad Thing.”
A pair of twins in a rural village in South Milawi.
The study examined twins in Malawi. These pairs were either both healthy, or one of the two a victim of malnutrition (Kwashkior). To summarize, the scientists tracked the change of these twins microbes as they aged (since microbes evolve as children grow). The quantity of microbes found in the twins’ poop determined the health of their gut microbes. Those with significantly fewer microbes than their twin-partner had concurrently been diagnosed with Kwashkior.
You might be thinking that scientists concluded the correlation between microbe health and Kwashkior from this, but the experiment was much more thorough than that.
Scientists harvested microbes from the pairs of twins consisting of one healthy partner and one diagnosed partner. They did this by removing microbes from their feces, and freezing them to ensure live transport to the the intestines of mice. It was hypothesized that the transplant of the poor microbiome would cause the mouse to lose weight.
The Malawian diet was formulated into a mouse diet to ensure the mice were consuming food of the same nutritional value. The food was also sterilized to prevent their pseudo-human microbial community from being interfered with by bacteria. That being so, the mice could live like the children in rural Southern Malawi.
Over three weeks’ time, the mice with a Kwashkior-effected microbiome became severely anorexic due to the protein deficient diet. After this three-week-period, scientists began feeding the mice ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) consisting of predominantly peanut protein. The weight of the mice then began to bounce back. The experiment was successful.
The combination of nutrition and microbes was proved to cause Kwashkior. These RUTF foods are provided today to Malawian youth on-site. Now that scientists understand that the microbiome health plays a huge role in the malnutrition of these children, they can better treat and prevent Kwashkior in Malawi and the rest of the Third World.
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This young girl exemplifies the symptoms of sever protein-malnutrition (Kwashkior).