People Living Together Share More Oral and Gut Microbiota
Researchers have found that people living together share more oral and gut microbes with each other than with others in their community. The study analyzed 1644 paired oral and fecal metagenomes from 808 individuals in 207 households in Italy and Fiji. The findings suggest that understanding natural microbiome transmission can inform more targeted artificial transmission solutions, such as fecal microbiota transplants.
- ▪Cohabitants shared significantly more oral and gut strains than people from the same population who did not live together
- ▪Romantic partners shared more oral microbes with each other, likely due to kissing
- ▪Highly transmissible gut species were mainly associated with biomarkers for type 2 diabetes and poorer cardiometabolic health
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TOPLINEPeople with close family ties who lived together shared more oral and gut microbes with each other than with other people in their communities.METHODOLOGYResearchers analyzed 1644 paired oral and fecal metagenomes from 808 individuals in 207 households in Italy and Fiji to map microbiome strain transmission patterns across household and body sites.They used strain-level phylogenetic analysis to identify shared microbial strains between individuals with close family ties who were living together and compared strain-sharing rates across different household relationship types (eg, siblings or partners).Additional analyses examined the transmissibility of individual microbial species and their associations with cardiometabolic and cancer biomarkers.TAKEAWAYCohabitants shared…
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