Issue link: http://viewer.e-digitaledition.com/i/209733
oUtnUMBERinG HUMan CELLS 10 to onE, MiCRoBES Can BE FoUnD tHRoUGHoUt tHE BoDY — tHE SKin, VaGina, MoUtH anD GUt. tHESE tinY BaCtERia in tHE HUMan GUt MaY PRoVE to BE tHE KEY to FUtURE tHERaPiES FoR MUCH MoRE tHan GaStRointEStinaL DiSoRDERS. It'sThe All iN Gut By Michael Ferguson S Rob Knight, PhD, Associate Professor at the BioFrontiers Institute of the University of Colorado Boulder, has been studying the various ways these microbes — communities of microbes in the body are referred to as microbiota, while their genes are the microbiome — impact human health. His findings could elevate standards of care for disease processes ranging from gastrointestinal disorders to neurodegeneration. The widely reported case of Kaitlin Hunter — who, after surviving and recovering from a major car accident that broke all her toes, fractured her spine and lacerated her liver and colon, nearly died from a horrific Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) — illustrates t he potent ia l of g ut m icrobiot a in treatment. InCE 2005, Transplant What? CDI can cause life-threatening diarrhea and colon inflammation and is one of the few bacteria that can survive antibiotic treatments — the first line of defense against the infection, Knight explains. Approximately 20 percent of CDI sufferers relapse, at which point the infection becomes more difficult to treat. "When CDI infects your gut, it creates a radically altered microbial community that's dominated by CDI, which is dysfunctional," Knight says. "Typically, it's really hard to treat with antibiotics, and, in fact, you can trigger it with antibiotics. It's one of the few species that's able to survive and persist in patients taking antibiotics. Basically, you have a radically altered and degraded ecosystem in the gut." To save Hunter's life, physicians employed a treatment that effectively