A piece in Slate on the vaginal microbiome’s role in human existence. (And yes, there’s also a penile microbiome. When I figure out a compelling angle, I’ll pen an article on it. Suggestions welcome.)
The major takeaways from this article. First: the places we assumed were sterile (uterus, ovaries, lungs) are turning out to naturally contain microbes. My bet is that any part of the body connected to the outside will have a specific microbiome, and that shifts in this community will correlate with disease.
There’s even evidence that native bacteria, which are not pathogenic, are shuttled around the body inside white blood cells. They have internal right-of-way privileges. It’s mind-boggling that our genetic self and our bacterial self are so intimately intertwined. As soon as we accept this reality, then we can move to the idea of proactive cultivation.
The meta idea here is that a number of disorders, ranging from the unpleasant to the terrifying, may be preventable with a simple and painless proactive approach. I hesitate to recommend that we all take probiotics prophylactically–the science just isn’t in yet–but I’m sure that once the best bugs are identified and shown to work, we will. That’s the future of medicine. Small nudges — maintenance therapy — that lower the odds of very undesirable outcomes.
This study suggests that women already taking probiotics orally before conception have a lower risk of preterm birth. Hard to demonstrate causality in this case — could be that healthier people take probiotics more often — but the idea is tantalizing.
