A recent research paper from the University of Helsinki entitled “Impacts of maternal microbiota and microbial metabolites on fetal intestine, brain, and placenta” caught my eye.
The microbiota is a unique community of about 100 trillion bacterial cells, fungi, and viruses pitching their tents in our gut. Everyone’s microbiome is unique, regulated by what we eat and drink as well as many other factors such as sleep, exercise, our social relations, and environment.
Not long ago, biologists used to refer disparagingly to bacteria as “bags of enzymes” but lately gut micro-organisms have gone “legit” and scientists are now enthusiastically studying their influence on human health and disease.
For example, the above-mentioned Finnish study compared fetuses of dams living in a normal environment with dams living in a germ-free, sterile environment. What they found was that the immune system and host-microbe interactions were dialed up in the fetuses of the normal environment mothers.
Similarly, genes in the brains of fetuses of the normal environment mothers associated (researchers, as a rule, say “associated” because of the presence of a multitude of unknown factors in biology or psychology experiments, so they can rarely say “caused”) with the development and functioning of the nervous system and genes in the placenta that regulate pregnancy, were activated to a larger extent than in the controls.
Male mice were more affected than female mice. There is much speculation as to why males across the board have higher morbidity and mortality rates than females. I shall deal with that question in a future post.
We are further learning that an unbalanced gut microbiome in the mother may also lead in the offspring to dysfunction in the immune system such as inflammatory bowel diseases and allergies. Mikael Niku, the lead........