{"id":15389,"date":"2019-02-26T15:00:54","date_gmt":"2019-02-26T14:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.embl.de\/?p=15389"},"modified":"2024-03-22T11:17:08","modified_gmt":"2024-03-22T10:17:08","slug":"many-gut-microbes-may-originate-in-the-mouth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/science\/many-gut-microbes-may-originate-in-the-mouth\/","title":{"rendered":"Many gut microbes may originate in the mouth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Scientists from EMBL\u2019s Bork group<\/a>, in collaboration with the Zeller team<\/a> and the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine<\/a>, have identified many shared microbial strains in saliva and stool samples from several hundred people across three continents. Their research, published in eLife<\/em>, shows that the barrier between oral and gut microbiomes is weaker than expected and highlights evidence of oral-gut transmission of several microbes thought to play direct roles in the progression of colorectal cancer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mouth and the gut are abundantly colonised by microbes and linked by a constant flow of food and saliva. Despite this, they host distinctly different microbiomes. The acidic stomach and antimicrobial small intestine form an oral-gut barrier which was thought to kill off the vast majority of oral microbes before they reached the gut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oral-gut transmission occurs when enough cells of an oral species survive the population bottleneck of the oral-gut barrier to establish a new colony inside the gut. This barrier failure has previously been considered rare and \u2013 when it does happen \u2013 associated with various diseases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the scientists found that, although patients suffering from colorectal cancer or rheumatoid arthritis did indeed show higher levels, oral-gut transmission is actually very common in healthy people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n