Emily is a health news writer based in London, United Kingdom. She holds a bachelor's degree in biology from Durham University and a master's degree in clinical and therapeutic neuroscience from Oxford University. She has worked in science communication, medical writing and as a local news reporter while undertaking journalism training.
The gut microbiome, the community of microorganisms that live in the colon, may shape a person's risk of developing chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Now, scientists have developed a computational tool that they say can reveal how"healthy" a person's gut microbiome is, using data from a single stool sample.
Anyone can freely download and use GMWI2, but they'll need a"basic computer science or bioinformatics background" to interpret the results, study co-author Jaeyun Sung, an assistant professor of surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, told Live Science.The team hopes that eventually, anyone will be able to get a gut health score from their local clinic by providing a stool sample, Sung said. However, other experts have expressed concerns about the potential utility of such a tool.
By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.In this case, the researchers trained GMWI2 to identify specific features of the gut microbiomes of people who have a disease — say, diabetes — and compare them to the gut microbiomes of people without that condition. They did this by feeding it data on the mix of microbes found in the stool samples from about 8,000 people from 26 countries on six continents.
Unlike well-established diagnostic tools, such as colonoscopies for colorectal cancer, GMWI2 is not designed to diagnose specific diseases, the study authors emphasized. Rather, it's meant to flag subtle changes in a person's gut health that may hint that they're likely to develop a given disease, they wrote.
The study is a"heroic attempt" to tie specific gut microbiome signatures to either health or disease, said Willem De Vos, an emeritus professor of human microbiomics at the University of Helsinki who was not involved in the research. However,"one of the problems with the approach is that health is hard to define — health is more than the absence of disease," de Vos told Live Science in an email.
This means that a person who is trying to monitor the health of their gut microbiome after a round of antibiotics, for instance, would need to keep using the tool on a regular basis, such as every week or month, Sung said.
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