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Posted 11/14/2019 12:49 AM (GMT 0)
Gut viruses
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7232093/Gut-virus-older-humanity-useful-Crohns-diabetes-medicine.html
Posted 11/14/2019 1:32 PM (GMT 0)
Interesting, thanks for sharing! I like novel approaches, and hope that one of them is right!
Posted 11/14/2019 3:11 PM (GMT 0)
It is interesting to hear about a new way to eliminating bacteria. RIght now this is not so strongly related to diabetes or UC - the science journalist seems to have failed at understanding the scientist's example.

Dysbiosis is implicates fairly strongly in the presentation of UC, although cause or consequence, is still an open question.

Dysbiosis is less strongly present in thinking about diabetes and other metabolic disorders related to glucose and energy metabolism. Again, cause or consequence is very open.

But, for example, if dysbiosis emerged in a causal role for triggering, AND a causal role for keeping a disease going once triggered (two different things), and IF it was a bloom of certain bacteria instead a deficit of other particular bacteria, then one way to prune back the species in bloom might be to kill them with one of these modified viruses.

Thats a lot of IFs, and there are other ways like nutrition and probiotics and prebiotics to manipulate dysbiosis. I think the string of IFs was lost on the science writer.

Also, the virus would need to be modified to attack particular bacteria. This means it would be a GMO. I don;t run from GMO, but some people would reject the idea of a GMO virus being put into their system if a nutritional approach could be tried first.

I think the real near term promise of this research is ways to replace traditional antibiotics with these GMO viruses - essentially a biological antibiotic.
Posted 11/14/2019 5:50 PM (GMT 0)
it sounds so appealing, but I myself would be afraid of getting a virus into my system, but maybe something safer will be manufactured on the basis of it
Posted 11/14/2019 7:16 PM (GMT 0)
Wow, that does sound interesting. The headline almost sounds made up, lol: Scientists discover gut virus 'older than humanity' found in faeces samples from SEWERS could be used to treat Crohn's and diabetes
Posted 11/14/2019 7:18 PM (GMT 0)
This is what's known as bacteriophage therapy. Bacteria can get sick too, from viruses. Knowing which viruses target which bacteria can help with targeted therapy. Viruses can even be engineered to do this.

The technology is nowhere near sophisticated enough to run experiments in UC.

I'm also not convinced that dysbiosis is the root cause of UC, more than it is a symptom.

I think there's a genetic component that makes the immune system hyperactive in a specific way, and then a trigger like a gut infection. I believe that IBD is pathogen driven in most people, and the increased rates of IBD we're seeing are due to some kind of contamination in industrial agriculture.

Countries that don't have our industrial agriculture have very low rates of UC. As soon as "developing" countries get our tech and food systems, they start getting UC. China showed us this.

It's not that UC never happens because it has existed for all of human history, as far as they can tell... but the rates are much higher now.

I don't think this tedious method of targeting specific bacteria with viruses or antibiotics is going to work. Modern medicine has a bad habit of getting way too specific. They can't look at the big picture and so they can't treat the big picture. They can only treat one symptom at a time, and UC is a big-picture disease that requires understanding relationships between many different systems in the body.

Modern medicine is not cross-disciplinary or holistic enough yet to deal with this. It's why they're failing. But alternative medicine is also failing. Modern medicine has the technology we need to deal with this, but they don't have the proper way of seeing yet.
Posted 11/14/2019 7:51 PM (GMT 0)
I find this very interesting because part of my last post concerns were antibiotic resistant bacteria. This sounds like it is something that was looked at years ago and then thrown to the side with the ease of multi-use antibiotics. It gives some hope with the link of gut bacteria and health, but also for treating other future diseases that no longer respond to antibiotics.
Thanks for sharing.
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