Welcome to our new series Microbiome Minute, where experts from the AGA Center for Gut Microbiome Research & Education break down the most interesting research developments in this space with 1-minute summaries.
Today’s Microbiome Minute
Dr. Phillip Tarr, chair of AGA’s microbiome center, provides a review of the article, “Gut microbiome composition is associated with future onset of Crohn’s disease in healthy first-degree relative”, published in Gastroenterology by Juan Raygoza Garay, et al.
"Gut bacterial communities in treatment naïve IBD patients differ from those in controls. Finding microbial aberrancy prior to disease onset would strengthen the contention that the differences are causal. Garay, et al, assembled a multi-country set of first-degree relatives of Crohn’s disease patients and found a predictive signature up to five years before Crohn’s disease became clinically apparent. This study is the first to demonstrate that gut microbiome composition is associated with future onset of Crohn’s disease. This finding opens new opportunities to discern the microbial signals that precede Crohn’s disease in genetically susceptible people and offers the potential for early preventive action."
