A Gut Feeling

A Gut Feeling

Sometimes that feeling in the gut is more than just an intuition.

Two studies published last month found that microbes in human guts can tell a lot about a person’s health and how long they will live, according to Science Magazine.

In the first study, a research team reviewed 47 studies that analyzed the connections between the collective genomes of gut microbes and 13 common diseases, including schizophrenia and asthma.

The team then compared the studies with 24 genome-wide association studies, which correlate specific human genetic variants with diseases.

The results revealed that gut microbes were actually 20 percent better at telling apart healthy and ill individuals than a person’s own genes.

The second study, meanwhile, looked into the correlation between a person’s gut bacteria and their long-term mortality risk through analyzing data from a Finnish study that collected health information and stool samples from thousands of participants in 2002.

The authors of the second paper noted that people with an abundance of Enterobacteriaceae bacteria – a family of bacteria that includes E. coli and salmonella – were 15 percent more likely to die in the next 15 years.

Scientists are still unclear why gut bacteria are related to death and disease, but both studies hint that more attention should be given to residents in our intestines.