MS link to gut bacteria found
Research conducted by Ashutosh Mangalam, PhD, now assistant professor of pathology at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, when he was with the Mayo Clinic has shown that people with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) have a different microbiome to that of healthy people.
In the study (published June 2016 in Scientific Reports), Mangalem says that they have isolated the bacteria that healthy people have more of; and those people with MS have more of.
The researchers are sure that the presence of certain bacteria, or lack of others is causing the auto-immune response that typifies MS.
This work goes a small step further than studies by researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) a Harvard associated facility. There, in May 2016, researchers found that gut bacteria could produce substances from food that influenced inflammatory and neuro-degeneration.
Francisco Quintana, a researcher at the Ann Romney Center for Neurological Diseases at BWH stated that what we eat influences the gut bacteria in our body and the compounds they produce. Small molecules then travel to the brain and can influence ‘astrocytes’ in the brain and spinal column. The gut thus controls inflammation in the brain and several neurological diseases.
Thus deficeits in the diet and/or deficeits in the gut microbiome and/or deficeits in the process of molecules and astrocytomas could be involved. (Harvard Gazette)
