Sometimes being a Researcher is Crap

Miyake S, Kim S, Suda W, Oshima K, Nakamura M, Matsuoka T, Chihara N, Tomita A, Sato W, Kim SW, Morita H, Hattori M, Yamamura T. Dysbiosis in the Gut Microbiota of Patients with Multiple Sclerosis, with a Striking Depletion of Species Belonging to Clostridia XIVa and IV Clusters. PLoS One. 2015 14;10(9):e0137429

The pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis (MS), an autoimmune disease affecting the brain and spinal cord, remains poorly understood. Patients with MS typically present with recurrent episodes of neurological dysfunctions such as blindness, paresis, and sensory disturbances. Studies on experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) animal models have led to a number of testable hypotheses including a hypothetical role of altered gut microbiota in the development of MS. To investigate whether gut microbiota in patients with MS is altered, we compared the gut microbiota of 20 Japanese patients with relapsing-remitting (RR) MS (MS20) with that of 40 healthy Japanese subjects (HC40) and an additional 18 healthy subjects (HC18). All the HC18 subjects repeatedly provided faecal samples over the course of months (158 samples in total). Analysis of the bacterial 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene by using a high-throughput culture-independent pyrosequencing method provided evidence of a moderate dysbiosis in the structure of gut microbiota in patients with MS. Furthermore, we found 21 species that showed significant differences in relative abundance between the MS20 and HC40 samples. On comparing MS samples to the 158 longitudinal HC18 samples, the differences were found to be reproducibly significant for most of the species. These taxa comprised primarily of clostridial species belonging to Clostridia clusters XIVa and IV and Bacteroidetes. The phylogenetic tree analysis revealed that none of the clostridial species that were significantly reduced in the gut microbiota of patients with MS overlapped with other spore-forming clostridial species capable of inducing colonic regulatory T cells (Treg), which prevent autoimmunity and allergies; this suggests that many of the clostridial species associated with MS might be distinct from those broadly associated with autoimmune conditions. Correcting the dysbiosis and altered gut microbiota might deserve consideration as a potential strategy for the prevention and treatment of MS.

Being a Researcher is great and exciting.You go through a period of doing the same thing day-in, day-out and somethings can be tedious, sometimes inspirational...but you get results and that spurs you on. 

Sometimes your boss can have you doing things you don't really want to do, so what did the person in this study think...wading through peoples Pooh.....Now that is an  S..h..1 job. And it is an S..h...1 job being done all over the World I suspect as thee are many labs in the hunt for microbiota .

So this study looks at the gut bacteria of people with MS and they find a difference between them and healthy people and a find type of bacteria different from people making regulator cells. 

What next a trial? I bet this is coming, if it has not already come.

We've had worms, so faecal transplants next?

However, you don't need a Neuro to do this and you can eat someone else's Pooh and that is just what is happening. 

Get yourself off to Australia for a bit of R&R, clear out your bowels and then eat it.....Easy peezy lemon squeezy. Problem is you don't know if it works and second it is going to cost you. 

How many trials will be funded...loads around the World one per big MS Society? and then more for each of the other immune diseases.

Unless we really know which bacteria are useful and show that this really works, it is simply a pipe dream....more to follow no doubt.

Until that time, it is just pampering, enjoy it if you do it, but do it with your eyes-wide open and for the researcher hopefully they can do it with their noses blocked:-)

There is no doubt that for some things, a faecal transplant works, we will need to wait and see if it translates in to treating hmans

Labels: