Researchers Use Smartphone App to Track Gut Bacteria and their Impact

Researchers Use Smartphone App to Track Gut Bacteria and their Impact

Posted by: Enozia Vakil 15 days ago

Interesting results about the composition of gut bacteria and its close relationship with health has been resulted in the development of a new smartphone app which has supposedly eased up things for scientists.

The researchers collected information about the study subject’s gut bacteria by using the app.

Diet, exercise, bowel movements and mood are the daily activity logged by them and submit regular stool and saliva samples. The researchers analysed the samples in detail to determine what had the greatest effect on the composition of gut bacteria.

The participants had a ‘default’ gut bacteria which remained unaffected by sleep levels, exercise and mood.

Smartphone app tracks how gut bacteria affect health, Study
Photo Credits: Flickr

The researchers also found two life events that had a significant effect on the gut bacteria – one subject moved abroad while the other had a significant bout of food poisoning which caused most pre-existing gut bacterial species to decline. What’s more, this relationship between diet and specific bacterial groups showed themselves in a single day.

“Life events such as visiting another country or contracting a disease cause a significant shift in the make-up of the gut bacteria – the community of gut bacteria living in the digestive system,” the researchers explained.

“This has given us a lot of new ideas for follow up studies and analyses of gut microbial ecology as well as infectious diseases in humans,” professor Lawrence David from Duke University, explained. “I was surprised by our results in several ways. First, I wasn’t sure we would find correlations between fiber intake and gut bacterial dynamics on such short time scales.”

Read more at 

http://americanlivewire.com/2014-07-26-researchers-use-smartphone-app-track-gut-bacteria-impact/