In ‘A short History of Nearly Everything’, Bill Bryson talks about a time in the 1980s when a crater discovered in the wilds of Iowa was thought to be the site of the comet crash that wiped out the dinosaurs. Scientists flocked to Iowa where two little known palaeontologists: Ray Anderson and Brian Wilke, became the centre of attention, until… someone found a more probable dinosaur-killing crater in the Yukatan peninsula. Anderson and Wilke faded into the oblivion of the Iowan landscape, left in the dust of departing scientists who couldn’t get out of Iowa and to the Yukatan quickly enough.
It’s to be hoped the hype around microbes and health doesn’t suffer the same fate. Currently links with gut micro-organisms are being found with everything from jock itch to schizophrenia. But science has gone down this path before.
Microbes are interesting, there’s little doubt. We know they’re ubiquitous in, and on, the human body. Research indicates they’re involved in a range of ailments like Clostridium Difficulie which has no current successful treatment. Interesting also is the link with obesity through the dynamic association of a ‘leaky gut’, with long-term weight maintenance.
Identifying the issue of course is one thing. Developing treatments is another. To date this has come largely from a ‘shotgun’ approach by commercial producers of pre and probiotic products.
But as some microbiologists have pointed out, living the modern western lifestyle, then trying to correct this with a probiotic, is akin to nuking the barrier reef, then repopulating it with a Toad Fish!
Perhaps a more promising (although less palatable) initiative is the use of faecal microbial transplants (FMT) – put simply, the infusion of healthy poo from unaffected individuals into those who are affected. In several animal studies this has been shown to produce weight loss in obese and weight gain in lean animals. A major US study is expected to report on the effects in humans soon.
A positive finding could be a boon to University students currently surviving on payments from blood and sperm donations! And with Australia leading the FMT race, Australians could benefit first. FMT could be a serious new procedure for Lifestyle Medicine.
Before this happens though, we need to take a deep breath and remember the experience of Anderson and Wilke in Iowa. Let’s hope the microbiome craze turns out to be a little more enduring.
