Lifestyle has a strong impact on intestinal bacteria | EurekAlert! Science News - 1 views
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darijob on 29 Apr 16Everything you eat or drink affects your intestinal bacteria, and is likely to have an impact on your health. That is the finding of a large-scale study led by RUG/UMCG geneticist Cisca Wijmenga into the effect of food and medicine on the bacterial diversity in the human gut, which is published this Friday in the prestigious research journal Science. In this study researchers collected stool samples from more than 1100 people taking part in the LifeLines programme, which is monitoring the health of 165,000 residents of the Northern Netherlands. The samples were used to analyse the DNA of the bacteria and other organisms that live in the gut. In addition to stools, the study collected information on the participants' diet, medicine-use and health. This study is unique in that it focussed on a group of normal people whereas previous research was frequently focussed on patients with a specific illness. Further, the study covered an exceptionally large group of people and studied their gut DNA in detail. "Normally researchers only investigate one particular region of DNA in which different groups of bacteria can be distinguished," Wijmenga explains. "We have mapped all the bacterial DNA to gain much more detailed information about bacteria types."
