genetic nuance in : The human microbiome: Me, myself, us | The Economist

[Guest guest]

Some and perhaps many among us, myself included, have long believed that

the " must be genetic " model for autism has been vastly overemphasized by

the NIH and by NIH-funded researchers. Thus the final paragraphs of the

*/Me, myself, us/* article (1) merit attention:

> A lot of the medical conditions the microbiome is being implicated in

> are puzzling. They seem to run in families, but no one can track down

> the genes involved. This may be because the effects are subtly spread

> between many different genes. But it may also be that some---maybe a

> fair few---of those genes are not to be found in the human genome at all.

>

> Though less reliably so than the genes in egg and sperm, microbiomes,

> too, can be inherited. Many bugs are picked up directly from the

> mother at birth. Others arrive shortly afterwards from the immediate

> environment. It is possible, therefore, that apparently genetic

> diseases whose causative genes cannot be located really are heritable,

> but that the genes which cause them are bacterial.

>

> This is of more than merely intellectual interest. Known genetic

> diseases are often hard to treat and always incurable. The best that

> can be hoped for is a course of drugs for life. But the microbiome is

> medically accessible and manipulable in a way that the human genome is

> not. It can be modified, both with antibiotics and with transplants.

> If the microbiome does turn out to be as important as current research

> is hinting, then a whole new approach to treatment beckons.

>

//

> 1. */Me, myself, us/*

> Looking at human beings as ecosystems that contain many collaborating

> and competing species could change the practice of medicine

> Aug 18th 2012http://www.economist.com/node/21560523

>

> excerpt:

>

> That bacteria can cause disease is no revelation. But the diseases in

> question are. Often, they are not acute infections of the sort

> 20th-century medicine has been so good at dealing with (and which have

> coloured doctors' views of bacteria in ways that have made medical

> science slow to appreciate the richness and relevance of people's

> microbial ecosystems). They are, rather, the chronic illnesses that

> are now, at least in the rich world, the main focus of medical

> attention. For, from obesity and diabetes, via heart disease, asthma

> and multiple sclerosis, to neurological conditions such as autism, the

> microbiome seems to play a crucial role.

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> /*.*/