Usually , you knock back pill packed with drugs ; cocktails of chemicals which have been fastidiously proven to help make you better . Soon , though , you might be swallowing tablets filled with something you might not expect : bacterium .
Of course , everyone knows that not all bacteria is spoilt , especially if you ’re a heavy yoghourt eater . But you might not realise that some bacteria are so useful that they can in reality be used to fight off diseases .
Indeed , that ’s exactly what a company calledSeres Healthbelieves , according to Technology Review . It ’s been working on a bacterium oral contraceptive for two yr , and now it ’s quick to examine it in patients . The tricky affair is , there ’s unremarkably a monolithic magnetic variation in the microbes living in different peoples ’ gut , which mean that the ship’s company plan to use molecular analysis to see on the button what bacterium are expect to do good . Technology Review explain :
In recent years , magnanimous - scale studies by the National Institutes of Health and others have evince that the healthy human consistency is family to 10,000 or so metal money of microbe — outnumber human cells 10 to one . At the same time , medical researchers have shown that the microbiome can affect health , and that swapping bacteria can cure GI infection and potentially address conditions such as excitation and obesity …
The company will canvas the differences between microbiomes in healthy patients and those with a picky condition … [ W]hen considering how to rebalance an unhealthy microbiome , Seres Health research worker will look at which functional theatrical role of microörganisms are out of proportion and then adjudicate to restore Libra by fork over microbes able of bring about or regulating those role . If successful , Seres Health could make a new form of music .
This is a young and unlike modality of treatment , that film vantage of the fact that molecular psychoanalysis is now fairly aboveboard to ply cut health improvement . The company , intelligibly , has n’t let on what variety — or even how many — bacteria it plan to practice , though it does say it ’s essay to keep the figure low .
Regardless , it ’s a step on from other , current bacterial treatments — such asfecal transplants for C. Difficile — which are less rigorously tune up for patient . In perfume , they ’re a try out - it - and - see treatment , unlike the tailor-make technique that Seres Health attempt to use . In fact , Seres admits that it is working on a C. Difficile treatment of its own — so suffers may not have to face up tothe taboo of poop transplants for much longer . Here ’s hoping . [ Technology Review ]
The Taboo Treatment : How Fecal Transplants Save sprightliness
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