Rainforest Life Helps Diversify Kids' Gut Microbes

Can immersing yourself in a South American jungle and the high-fiber, unprocessed diet of its villagers make your gut microbes more diverse? And could it have benefits for people with obesity, type 1 diabetes and other disorders? A study led by Rutgers University­­–New Brunswick researchers followed seven city-dwelling adults and children who lived in a remote Venezuelan jungle village without electricity, soap or other amenities for 16 days. For the children, their microbiome – the beneficial germs in their intestines, skin, mouths and noses – became more diverse, with higher proportions of helpful bacteria. A similar change did not occur in the adults who visited the rainforest. The study appears in the journal mSphere. “The findings suggest dietary interventions to encourage a more diverse microbiome may best succeed in children, while the microbiome of adults may be more resistant to change,” said senior researcher Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, a professor in Rutgers–New Brunswick’s Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology and Department of Anthropology. Dominguez-Bello found in previous studies that the human microbiome in urbanized, more modernized societies contains a far less diverse array of species than that of people living more traditional, pre-modern lifestyles in the Amazon jungle of Venezuela and Peru. https://www.technologynetworks.com/genomics/news/rainforest-life-helps-diversify-kids-microbiomes-308281?utm_campaign=Newsletter_TN_BreakingScienceNews&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=65566662&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9DjtIIuUc2_eLILoh86doCojj3i3X2ZKprbrPhXHMVy4LwRpeD-DTWz73dvoKWckuKKyHhgq01QCCm-_wWkJCu-P_jxQ&_hsmi=65566662