All the Small Things: Talking about our Microbiome

All the small things. While most would hear this phrase and think of one of California punk rock band Blink 182’s greatest hits, I’m actually talking about something entirely different: microorganisms. Microorganisms are sometimes thought of in a negative way, likely because of the many harms they can cause when they become unbalanced in our body. But we often don’t give them the credit for the ways they can also help within our body. And some don’t do either, as some microorganisms have a commensal relationship with us. For this blog, I will be talking about the microbiome and the many ways it can function to help or hurt us.

When I talk about the microbiome in this post, I am referring to the human microbiome, which is the collection of microorganisms that are living and growing in people. From birth, we begin to collect the microorganisms living inside and on us, and by the time we are adults we contain so many microorganisms that they actually outnumber human cells by 10 to 1. Research has shown that microorganisms in our microbiome benefit us by protecting us against infection, aiding in digestion, and producing things like vitamins that are important for our health. However, from research we also know that some microorganisms can have a parasitic relationship with humans and when they begin to grow, or when we lose a lot of the microorganisms that protect us by taking antibiotics, we can become infected or even have an infectious disease.

Because our microbiome can create an incredible impact on our daily functions, it is something that is being constantly researched, both in how it benefits us or can cause us harm. For example, Gasparrini AJ, et al has recently discovered that infants who were treated with antibiotics for a prolonged time (21 months to be exact) were found to have a less diverse microbiome and bacteria with more antibiotic resistant genes than that of an average child of their age. This opens up the doors for much more research including if this prolonged antibiotic treatment suppresses the growth of beneficial microorganisms or if it could lead to greater issues with treating bacterial infections later in life. Another possible way that our microbiome can impact our functioning is with our allergies and allergic reactions. After discovering that children who were allergic and not allergic to cow milk had different microbiomes, scientists recently transplanted the gut microbes of non-allergic children to allergic mice and found that, when exposed to milk, the mice with the transplanted microbes didn’t experience allergic reactions. This is also incredibly important and has led to a need for further research, as there is now a question as to if microbiome-modifying therapies could be used to prevent or treat food allergy.

Overall, it’s incredibly hard to summarize all the ways our microbiome interacts with us. And part of this is because there is still so much research that is currently being done or is yet to be done. But we do know some things. Sometimes microorganisms don’t do anything, sometimes they harm us, and sometimes they help us, and all of this depends on what type of microorganism they are, what other microorganisms are present, and the conditions that the body is in. These many factors can all come together to influence what kind of impact we are experiencing. Microbiome research is important and is becoming increasingly relevant because sometimes in order to understand the bigger picture, we must understand the smallest pieces.