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The brain has its own microbiome
- uLogMicheal 2y agoNext will we find that there is an exchange of microbes between the brain and gut?
- krageon 2y agoWe can take it one step further: There are microbes everywhere in your body, they matter and they do things. When you take them away or fuck with them too much, weird things start happening. It is I think not a particularly surprising take. But then often it can be valuable to have things that are kind of obvious codified into a paper of some sort so that we no longer have to rely on "but isn't that obvious?" and can instead point to some primary source that actually explains what is true. That way it can be true for everyone, even the people for whom it wasn't already obvious.
- dartos 2y agoThe most foundational science is pretty obvious after all. We all know that apples fall from trees and that banging 2 rocks together makes sparks.
- albumen 2y agoIt's obvious from apples falling from trees that gravity is actually the curvature of spacetime?
- dartos 2y agoI think maybe “foundation” was the wrong word. Maybe origins? My point was that the basic ideas that have been studied and refined over centuries were simple.
- passwordoops 2y agoNot all rocks (at least using human strength)
- hinoki 2y agoIs there any evidence (yet?) of an autoimmune disease caused by the immune system accidentally attacking part of the micro-biome?
- FollowingTheDao 2y agoThe immune systems does nothing by accident. The immune system is always trying to keep the microbiome in balance and the microbiome helps the immune system as well. There is no winning, only balance.
- foobarbecue 2y agoGreat question. Not that I have heard of.
- hanniabu 2y agoIdk if there's evidence of it but I know many people claim they developed celiac disease after a course of black label antibiotics
- krageon 2y agoYes, as far as I know. I thought this was a nice overview: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6300652/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6300652/
- codetrotter 2y agoI’ve got a gut feeling that we will. A gut feeling in my brain.
- giantg2 2y agoOf course. Gut microbes to blood via leaky gut, small enough blood microbes to brain via BBB.
- xattt 2y agoThat’s the purpose of the BBB, which breaks down in hypoxia and cell death.
- dghughes 2y agoSo-called " leaky gut" is hogwash pushed by quacks. It's what influencers push on TikTok or at least their interpretation of it. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/medical-critical-thinking/you-probably-dont-have-leaky-gut https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/medical-critical-thinking/...
- giantg2 2y agoSure, leaky gut as a diagnosis is a misapplication for the science. What is real is varying permeability of the intestinal lining in all humans.
- epcoa 2y agoVarying intestinal permeability has usually been related to inert compounds. More recently there has been some study on the significance of certain microbe metabolites, but the evidence for any kind of large scale microbial translocation in people that are not very sick (ie septic) is extremely tenuous. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10059777/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10059777/ "Key controversies in blood microbiome research are the susceptibility of low-biomass samples to exogenous contamination and undetermined microbial viability from NGS-based microbial profiling" Just because you can amplify some sporadic bacteria DNA from the blood does not mean that bacteria are hanging out in the blood in a physiologically meaningful way. A lot of it is frankly junk science in disreputable journals. On the otherhand: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-023-01350-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-023-01350-w "Despite this, we found no evidence for microbial co-occurrence relationships, core species or associations with host phenotypes."
- readthenotes1 2y agoThey used to, but then they built the vagus nerve
- gytisgreitai 2y agoFull article anyone?
- codethief 2y agoArchive.is is only showing the beginning of the article, too, unfortunately: https://archive.is/XW6H0 https://archive.is/XW6H0
- chadcmulligan 2y agoits new scientist I wouldn't worry about it. A number of times I've seen articles then looked at the source, they can be fairly exaggerated.
- hajjf 2y agoWhere are we in the hype cycle regarding microbiome? Would it be feasible to launch a startup that leverages the synergy between AI, the blockchain and gut bacteria? I am serious!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- digilypse 2y agoNFT bacteria?
- myhau 2y ago*bacterai
- Calavar 2y agoIt does feel like every organ system and every disease has at least one research group trying to connect it to the microbiome. It's reminiscent of the hype cycle around oxidative stress and antioxidants 20 uears ago. There was a core of solid science there, but in terms of connecting specific diseases to oxidative stress, it seems like the research community has largely moved on.
- FollowingTheDao 2y ago> in terms of connecting specific diseases to oxidative stress, it seems like the research community has largely moved on. As someone who knows someone at UNC Chapel Hill who was researching this starting about 15 years ago, the research community did not move on, the news just stopped talking/hyping about it. Here is a recent paper: Oxidative stress: The core pathogenesis and mechanism of Alzheimer's disease https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35395415/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35395415/ It is fundamentally true that oxidative balance is crucial to health, and that nutrients play a large role in maintaining that balance; Manganese (SOD2) zinc/copper (SOD1/SOD3), Selenium/Riboflavin/Pyridoxine (Glutathione). Deficiencies will not cause one disease, but many different ones, depending on the persons risk. I think oxidative balance plays a large role in controlling the microbiome. Nutrition, oxidative stress and intestinal dysbiosis: Influence of diet on gut microbiota in inflammatory bowel diseases https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35395415/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35395415/
- FollowingTheDao 2y agoI have a genetic partial immunodeficiency (PNP Deficiency) and I constantly get fungal infections. Living in warm, humid climates is a challenge for me. Reading just the beginning of that article "she experienced chronic pain, digestive problems and a cardiac arrhythmia", well, that is my life. I constantly have minor aspergillosis, and I have some lung nodules from some past fungal infections as well. Keeping the microbiome under control is all about a healthy immune system. But since my disorder affected my mental state they just labeled me as a psychiatric case and did not look any further, If anyone here is a doctor, please do not give up on psychiatric patients. Thanks. Interesting case here: Aspergillosis of the central nervous system in a previously healthy patient that simulated Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5180434/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5180434/ "He was admitted to the hospital with an occipital headache which he had endured for 2 months. For over 1 and a half months, he had also experienced behavioral disorders and a disruption of higher mental functions. He had retrograde and anterograde amnesia with both echolalia and the presence of visual hallucinations. "
- FollowingTheDao 2y agoSo, something is weird here, just want to invade this thread and ask HN if there should be a change. I literally have no idea why someone would downvote this comment. But someone did. This does not bother my ego, it bothers my sensibilities. So, maybe we should not allow downvotes unless someone comments on why they thing the comment is negative. No need to do this for upvotes because there is no need to comment on things you agree with. Downvoting without commenting leads to suppression without justification which can be bias or outright manipulation. Or maybe the up and downvotes are the problem?
- snapcaster 2y agoOr maybe your reaction to this downvote is the problem?
- foobarbecue 2y agoDown voting parent because it is entirely unproductive -- combative, with no attempt to explain itself.
- jac241 2y agoIf there’s a brain microbiome then why does nothing grow when I send CSF from an EVD?
- epcoa 2y agoBecause these microbes are better educated?
- sa501428 2y agoLooks like they are using molecular methods on post-mortem brains - all sorts of bugs can grow post-mortem and molecular methods can give false-positives as well as detect non-viable microbes, etc. But that's also based on a quick skim / haven't read the full paper yet. Culturing from CSF in general will depend on the concentration of the microbe, whether they are viable, if antibiotics/antivirals were already initiated pre-collection, whether it's plated on the appropriate media (e.g. a rare microbe that only grows on one specific type of agar plate), etc. Culturing viruses is also hard/many hospital micro labs have moved away from that. I think this study may suggest that we are failing to detect certain brain infections (and many are notoriously hard to diagnose if you don't catch them in the right window of time). But a brain microbiome sounds far-fetched. We even plate from brain tissue directly at times and aren't growing a bunch of organisms. I'd approach that claim with a healthy dose of skepticism.
- fredgrott 2y agoplus we have the fact that the brain at night shifts the fluid to the periphery of the blood vessels to clear out the lactate bound NH4 which would impact any microbiome if it exists...
- codethief 2y agoI mentioned Adam Savage's "Scariest [Podcast] Episode Yet" in a different context the other day[0] in which I remember Joe DeRisi[1] saying something along the lines of brain & spinal fluid being "absolutely pristine" when it comes to the presence/absence of a microbiome (in healthy individuals) and that it'd be real problem if there were one. I'm just a layman but can anyone ELI5 how this can be squared with the OP, specifically with statements like > It turns out our grey matter is teeming with bacteria, viruses and fungi [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41752034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41752034 [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_DeRisi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_DeRisi
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- MailleQuiMaille 2y agoSurprised as how such basic stuff gets "discovered" now and then. For all the toot of science, how come it took us that long to realise such a basic (in appearance at least I'm sure) fact ?
- teaearlgraycold 2y agoNot quite what you asked, but I know of why another really common set of micro organisms wasn’t noticed. Megaviruses, which rival bacteria in size, were only discovered in the last couple of decades. They’re everywhere. But when people would look for viruses they’d do so specifically by sorting matter in samples by size. So effectively by definition a virus would have to be small. We’d been looking at them under microscopes for over a hundred years but assumed they were inert particles.
- dghughes 2y agoI'm sure there are many other things still unknown and many things known but may change. Science is about discovery and many new discoveries are made even basic but also complex discoveries. Information known can change when new information is discovered. Science is not carved in stone it's not faith and corrections, updates are welcome part of discovery.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]