It makes sense that type 2 diabetes might be linked to changes in the gut microbiome, the teeming mess of microscopic lifeforms that inhabit our digestive systems helping to process our meals and modulate our immune systems. The metabolic disorder, which leaves high levels of sugar circulating in the blood, is strongly connected to lifestyle factors, including diet. Though scientists have been amassing evidence supporting the theory of microbiome involvement, capturing this connection in humans has been challenging, in large part because treatments for diabetes, themselves, can alter the microbiome. That means when patients participate in clinical studies, it’s hard to tease out which changes are a result of the disease rather than an effect of intervention.
Recently, though, an international team of researchers, including members of MIT’s Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics (CMIT), have presented the first study to examine how diabetes affects the microbiome in a large group of high-risk patients who had never before received treatment. The unique study, published in Frontiers in Endocrinology in January, provides a much clearer picture of how the microbiome might be affected in diabetes and sets the groundwork for future research into new potential interventions.
