The brain has its own microbiome(newscientist.com)
newscientist.com
The brain has its own microbiome
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26335104-500-the-brain-has-its-own-microbiome-heres-what-it-means-for-your-health/
52 comments
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I have a genetic partial immunodeficiency (PNP Deficiency) and I constantly get fungal infections. Living in warm, humid climates is a challenge for me.
Reading just the beginning of that article "she experienced chronic pain, digestive problems and a cardiac arrhythmia", well, that is my life. I constantly have minor aspergillosis, and I have some lung nodules from some past fungal infections as well.
Keeping the microbiome under control is all about a healthy immune system.
But since my disorder affected my mental state they just labeled me as a psychiatric case and did not look any further, If anyone here is a doctor, please do not give up on psychiatric patients. Thanks.
Interesting case here:
Aspergillosis of the central nervous system in a previously healthy patient that simulated Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5180434/
"He was admitted to the hospital with an occipital headache which he had endured for 2 months. For over 1 and a half months, he had also experienced behavioral disorders and a disruption of higher mental functions. He had retrograde and anterograde amnesia with both echolalia and the presence of visual hallucinations. "
Reading just the beginning of that article "she experienced chronic pain, digestive problems and a cardiac arrhythmia", well, that is my life. I constantly have minor aspergillosis, and I have some lung nodules from some past fungal infections as well.
Keeping the microbiome under control is all about a healthy immune system.
But since my disorder affected my mental state they just labeled me as a psychiatric case and did not look any further, If anyone here is a doctor, please do not give up on psychiatric patients. Thanks.
Interesting case here:
Aspergillosis of the central nervous system in a previously healthy patient that simulated Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5180434/
"He was admitted to the hospital with an occipital headache which he had endured for 2 months. For over 1 and a half months, he had also experienced behavioral disorders and a disruption of higher mental functions. He had retrograde and anterograde amnesia with both echolalia and the presence of visual hallucinations. "
Hey!
Reminds me a bit of myself. After 2 COVID infections and 3 vaccines, I began experiencing digestive problems, sleep disturbance, fatigue and severe brain fog. I also was often dismissed by the doctors as simply being depressed. But I now know that I have long COVID. The fight against it is still ongoing and you can read about my struggle with it here: https://tunn3l.pro.
I'm currently working with my girlfriend on a sticker campaign to educate people on these illnesses (esp. me/cfs) in order to remove the Stigmatisation that many patients with similar symptoms expierience.
Reminds me a bit of myself. After 2 COVID infections and 3 vaccines, I began experiencing digestive problems, sleep disturbance, fatigue and severe brain fog. I also was often dismissed by the doctors as simply being depressed. But I now know that I have long COVID. The fight against it is still ongoing and you can read about my struggle with it here: https://tunn3l.pro.
I'm currently working with my girlfriend on a sticker campaign to educate people on these illnesses (esp. me/cfs) in order to remove the Stigmatisation that many patients with similar symptoms expierience.
So, something is weird here, just want to invade this thread and ask HN if there should be a change.
I literally have no idea why someone would downvote this comment. But someone did. This does not bother my ego, it bothers my sensibilities.
So, maybe we should not allow downvotes unless someone comments on why they thing the comment is negative. No need to do this for upvotes because there is no need to comment on things you agree with.
Downvoting without commenting leads to suppression without justification which can be bias or outright manipulation.
Or maybe the up and downvotes are the problem?
I literally have no idea why someone would downvote this comment. But someone did. This does not bother my ego, it bothers my sensibilities.
So, maybe we should not allow downvotes unless someone comments on why they thing the comment is negative. No need to do this for upvotes because there is no need to comment on things you agree with.
Downvoting without commenting leads to suppression without justification which can be bias or outright manipulation.
Or maybe the up and downvotes are the problem?
I think sometimes these are accidental. When using HN on mobile, the up/down widget is so tiny that it's very easy to hit down when you mean to hit up.
From my experience with making comments connecting guy problems to other illnesses, I think the issue is HN hates anecdotal reports and especially when it contradicts "science".
I put that in quotes because we barely study the microbiome as the root cause for many issues (incredibly difficult to isolate variables) and there's constantly reports of academic malfeasance. As time goes on we also see the microbiome is responsible in things like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. But after every new discovery if you try to insinuate there's others, people will say "no no, it's just there's nothing else has to do with that"... intil the next discovery that was only found because they decided to actually invest money into researching it.
I put that in quotes because we barely study the microbiome as the root cause for many issues (incredibly difficult to isolate variables) and there's constantly reports of academic malfeasance. As time goes on we also see the microbiome is responsible in things like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. But after every new discovery if you try to insinuate there's others, people will say "no no, it's just there's nothing else has to do with that"... intil the next discovery that was only found because they decided to actually invest money into researching it.
You have a point, but often it seems that if a comment got a downvote because some rando took exception to it without a good reason; then the crowd will vote it back up fairly soon. And indeed, your comment is not grey at the time of writing. I personally am not a very consistent upvoter unless either a) the comment was amazing or b) it looks unfairly downvoted.
Or maybe your reaction to this downvote is the problem?
Down voting parent because it is entirely unproductive -- combative, with no attempt to explain itself.
Ha! Thanks! Nice! So I want to add as well, why just can I not down vote someone who makes a comment under mine but I can still up vote them? Why does my down vote not count when in this case?
To me it seems to make HN favor bias instead of new ideas (which may be right or wrong, but without
To me it seems to make HN favor bias instead of new ideas (which may be right or wrong, but without
If there’s a brain microbiome then why does nothing grow when I send CSF from an EVD?
Looks like they are using molecular methods on post-mortem brains - all sorts of bugs can grow post-mortem and molecular methods can give false-positives as well as detect non-viable microbes, etc. But that's also based on a quick skim / haven't read the full paper yet.
Culturing from CSF in general will depend on the concentration of the microbe, whether they are viable, if antibiotics/antivirals were already initiated pre-collection, whether it's plated on the appropriate media (e.g. a rare microbe that only grows on one specific type of agar plate), etc. Culturing viruses is also hard/many hospital micro labs have moved away from that.
I think this study may suggest that we are failing to detect certain brain infections (and many are notoriously hard to diagnose if you don't catch them in the right window of time). But a brain microbiome sounds far-fetched. We even plate from brain tissue directly at times and aren't growing a bunch of organisms. I'd approach that claim with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Culturing from CSF in general will depend on the concentration of the microbe, whether they are viable, if antibiotics/antivirals were already initiated pre-collection, whether it's plated on the appropriate media (e.g. a rare microbe that only grows on one specific type of agar plate), etc. Culturing viruses is also hard/many hospital micro labs have moved away from that.
I think this study may suggest that we are failing to detect certain brain infections (and many are notoriously hard to diagnose if you don't catch them in the right window of time). But a brain microbiome sounds far-fetched. We even plate from brain tissue directly at times and aren't growing a bunch of organisms. I'd approach that claim with a healthy dose of skepticism.
plus we have the fact that the brain at night shifts the fluid to the periphery of the blood vessels to clear out the lactate bound NH4 which would impact any microbiome if it exists...
Because these microbes are better educated?
Next will we find that there is an exchange of microbes between the brain and gut?
We can take it one step further: There are microbes everywhere in your body, they matter and they do things. When you take them away or fuck with them too much, weird things start happening.
It is I think not a particularly surprising take. But then often it can be valuable to have things that are kind of obvious codified into a paper of some sort so that we no longer have to rely on "but isn't that obvious?" and can instead point to some primary source that actually explains what is true. That way it can be true for everyone, even the people for whom it wasn't already obvious.
It is I think not a particularly surprising take. But then often it can be valuable to have things that are kind of obvious codified into a paper of some sort so that we no longer have to rely on "but isn't that obvious?" and can instead point to some primary source that actually explains what is true. That way it can be true for everyone, even the people for whom it wasn't already obvious.
Is there any evidence (yet?) of an autoimmune disease caused by the immune system accidentally attacking part of the micro-biome?
Yes, as far as I know. I thought this was a nice overview: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6300652/
The immune systems does nothing by accident. The immune system is always trying to keep the microbiome in balance and the microbiome helps the immune system as well.
There is no winning, only balance.
There is no winning, only balance.
Idk if there's evidence of it but I know many people claim they developed celiac disease after a course of black label antibiotics
Great question. Not that I have heard of.
The most foundational science is pretty obvious after all.
We all know that apples fall from trees and that banging 2 rocks together makes sparks.
We all know that apples fall from trees and that banging 2 rocks together makes sparks.
Not all rocks (at least using human strength)
I’ve got a gut feeling that we will. A gut feeling in my brain.
Of course. Gut microbes to blood via leaky gut, small enough blood microbes to brain via BBB.
So-called " leaky gut" is hogwash pushed by quacks. It's what influencers push on TikTok or at least their interpretation of it.
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/medical-critical-thinking/...
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/medical-critical-thinking/...
Sure, leaky gut as a diagnosis is a misapplication for the science. What is real is varying permeability of the intestinal lining in all humans.
Varying intestinal permeability has usually been related to inert compounds. More recently there has been some study on the significance of certain microbe metabolites, but the evidence for any kind of large scale microbial translocation in people that are not very sick (ie septic) is extremely tenuous.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10059777/
"Key controversies in blood microbiome research are the susceptibility of low-biomass samples to exogenous contamination and undetermined microbial viability from NGS-based microbial profiling"
Just because you can amplify some sporadic bacteria DNA from the blood does not mean that bacteria are hanging out in the blood in a physiologically meaningful way.
A lot of it is frankly junk science in disreputable journals.
On the otherhand: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-023-01350-w
"Despite this, we found no evidence for microbial co-occurrence relationships, core species or associations with host phenotypes."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10059777/
"Key controversies in blood microbiome research are the susceptibility of low-biomass samples to exogenous contamination and undetermined microbial viability from NGS-based microbial profiling"
Just because you can amplify some sporadic bacteria DNA from the blood does not mean that bacteria are hanging out in the blood in a physiologically meaningful way.
A lot of it is frankly junk science in disreputable journals.
On the otherhand: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-023-01350-w
"Despite this, we found no evidence for microbial co-occurrence relationships, core species or associations with host phenotypes."
"does not mean that bacteria are hanging out in the blood in a physiologically meaningful way."
That's the whole point of this sort of research - to find out if there are physiological connections and what they are.
That's the whole point of this sort of research - to find out if there are physiological connections and what they are.
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That’s the purpose of the BBB, which breaks down in hypoxia and cell death.
They used to, but then they built the vagus nerve
Surprised as how such basic stuff gets "discovered" now and then. For all the toot of science, how come it took us that long to realise such a basic (in appearance at least I'm sure) fact ?
Not quite what you asked, but I know of why another really common set of micro organisms wasn’t noticed. Megaviruses, which rival bacteria in size, were only discovered in the last couple of decades. They’re everywhere. But when people would look for viruses they’d do so specifically by sorting matter in samples by size. So effectively by definition a virus would have to be small. We’d been looking at them under microscopes for over a hundred years but assumed they were inert particles.
I'm sure there are many other things still unknown and many things known but may change. Science is about discovery and many new discoveries are made even basic but also complex discoveries. Information known can change when new information is discovered. Science is not carved in stone it's not faith and corrections, updates are welcome part of discovery.
Full article anyone?
Archive.is is only showing the beginning of the article, too, unfortunately: https://archive.is/XW6H0
its new scientist I wouldn't worry about it. A number of times I've seen articles then looked at the source, they can be fairly exaggerated.
Where are we in the hype cycle regarding microbiome? Would it be feasible to launch a startup that leverages the synergy between AI, the blockchain and gut bacteria? I am serious!
It does feel like every organ system and every disease has at least one research group trying to connect it to the microbiome. It's reminiscent of the hype cycle around oxidative stress and antioxidants 20 uears ago. There was a core of solid science there, but in terms of connecting specific diseases to oxidative stress, it seems like the research community has largely moved on.
> in terms of connecting specific diseases to oxidative stress, it seems like the research community has largely moved on.
As someone who knows someone at UNC Chapel Hill who was researching this starting about 15 years ago, the research community did not move on, the news just stopped talking/hyping about it.
Here is a recent paper: Oxidative stress: The core pathogenesis and mechanism of Alzheimer's disease
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35395415/
It is fundamentally true that oxidative balance is crucial to health, and that nutrients play a large role in maintaining that balance; Manganese (SOD2) zinc/copper (SOD1/SOD3), Selenium/Riboflavin/Pyridoxine (Glutathione).
Deficiencies will not cause one disease, but many different ones, depending on the persons risk.
I think oxidative balance plays a large role in controlling the microbiome.
Nutrition, oxidative stress and intestinal dysbiosis: Influence of diet on gut microbiota in inflammatory bowel diseases
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35395415/
As someone who knows someone at UNC Chapel Hill who was researching this starting about 15 years ago, the research community did not move on, the news just stopped talking/hyping about it.
Here is a recent paper: Oxidative stress: The core pathogenesis and mechanism of Alzheimer's disease
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35395415/
It is fundamentally true that oxidative balance is crucial to health, and that nutrients play a large role in maintaining that balance; Manganese (SOD2) zinc/copper (SOD1/SOD3), Selenium/Riboflavin/Pyridoxine (Glutathione).
Deficiencies will not cause one disease, but many different ones, depending on the persons risk.
I think oxidative balance plays a large role in controlling the microbiome.
Nutrition, oxidative stress and intestinal dysbiosis: Influence of diet on gut microbiota in inflammatory bowel diseases
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35395415/
If you were a nonprofit medical service or a for-profit insurance company, you could do AI analysis of gut microbiome eDNA against electronic health records with potential for significant value if you could get a stool sample every so often.
What's the synergy between blockchain and the others in this scenario?
There is one with the AI and gut bacteria combination: https://www.linkedin.com/company/anibiome/
They recently raised series A.
> Ani Biome uses machine learning models to provide personalized solutions for enhancing gut microbiome function and addressing inflammation, a prevalent factor in age-related chronic ailments.
But they are missing the blockchain component :)
> Ani Biome uses machine learning models to provide personalized solutions for enhancing gut microbiome function and addressing inflammation, a prevalent factor in age-related chronic ailments.
But they are missing the blockchain component :)
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I'm just a layman but can anyone ELI5 how this can be squared with the OP, specifically with statements like
> It turns out our grey matter is teeming with bacteria, viruses and fungi
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41752034
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_DeRisi