Diarrhea claims the lives of 500,000 children each year in low- and middle-income countries. Now researchers have linked chronic diarrhea to a specific pattern of gut bacteria, a discovery that could pave the way for new treatments capable of saving lives.
Read more …Children's gut bacteria may hold the key to diarrhea treatment
Many bacterial-linked illnesses, such as inflammatory bowel disease or colorectal cancer, are associated with an overgrowth of gut bacteria thought to be bad actors. But when researchers used a machine learning algorithm to predict the density of microbes -- called microbial load, from their gut microbiomes, they found that changes in microbial load, rather than the disease, could be a driver behind the presence of disease-associated microbial species.
Read more …We may be overestimating the association between gut bacteria and disease, machine learning study...