University of Calgary to Host New Western Canadian Microbiome Centre in 2017 at Cumming School of Medicine
A while back, I came across news of a new centre for microbiome research to open at the Cumming School of Medicine (U of C) in 2017 (https://www.ucalgary.ca/utoday/issue/2015-07-31/world-class-research-centre-launched-99-million-federal-grant). It's about time! The American Gut Project is way ahead of us on this one (http://humanfoodproject.com/americangut/), but if I am going to get my gut microbiota analyzed, I'd prefer to save Fedex-ing my sample to California and get it done locally instead!
Besides, this is approximately what I would receive in return for $99 USD and a few more hundred in rush delivery charges:
The data that you get back tells you what your most common gut species are, the percent composition of the main species overall, and compares you to a few other population groups. Although it would look gorgeous framed on your desk to show off to your workmates (!), it doesn't tell me most of the things that I would really want to know about my microbiome, namely...
How does my diversity compare to the healthiest samples? We know that greater diversity is better, but the analysis does not include a species count. It doesn't tell you whether your microbiota is diverse enough to indicate a robust microbial ecosystem. So if your gut has been hammered by antibiotics, stress, poor diet, or disease, you won't find out how much it's recovered. Another point about species diversity in your gut: it decreases as you age. Therefore, when ranking samples for diversity and health, it would only be fare to compare microbiome diversity of subjects with similar age ranges. (Note to self: one reason aged people have less pain tolerance is due to the gradual loss of species in your gut that help you cope with pain. So if you are still planning to get that body hair waxed, better now than when you're an old person.)
Do the species and ratios represent a healthy or unhealthy condition? I know from my research that Firmicutes is associated with high consumption of red meat and animal fat, and with obesity, but we would expect that everyone would have some Firmicutes. Comparing one sample with others of similar gender, diet and age is only useful if I know whether or not the other people sampled are healthy or not. There should be enough data to correlate the percentage of Firmicutes with body mass index, or at least a few answers to questions about health and weight. This is just one example.
Ethnicity in and of itself isn't a useful comparison. It bothers me that there are comparisons between "Western," "Venezuela," and "Malawi," as if charting these differences alone were in any way useful. There is no reason to bash the diet of all humans living in the Western world - some are healthy people who eat and exercise well and live to a healthy old age. That, and being "Western" is not homogeneous! To lump together Italians and Greeks eating a healthy Mediterranean diet, with obese Americans eating industrial food will result in a pool of data that tells you absolutely nothing! We also don't know if the Venezuelans and Malawians sampled were city-dwellers eating mostly canned and dried foods from a supermarket just like any other on the planet, or whether they were rural farmers who mostly eat the food that they grow. Unless the sample identifies specific genotypes, diets, lifestyles, or states of health, comparisons are just a spatter of meaningless dots, nothing more.
To be fair, the American Gut Project does give participants access to data as it accrues, and research is still in the early stages. Let's see how the work develops.
Besides, this is approximately what I would receive in return for $99 USD and a few more hundred in rush delivery charges:
How does my diversity compare to the healthiest samples? We know that greater diversity is better, but the analysis does not include a species count. It doesn't tell you whether your microbiota is diverse enough to indicate a robust microbial ecosystem. So if your gut has been hammered by antibiotics, stress, poor diet, or disease, you won't find out how much it's recovered. Another point about species diversity in your gut: it decreases as you age. Therefore, when ranking samples for diversity and health, it would only be fare to compare microbiome diversity of subjects with similar age ranges. (Note to self: one reason aged people have less pain tolerance is due to the gradual loss of species in your gut that help you cope with pain. So if you are still planning to get that body hair waxed, better now than when you're an old person.)
Do the species and ratios represent a healthy or unhealthy condition? I know from my research that Firmicutes is associated with high consumption of red meat and animal fat, and with obesity, but we would expect that everyone would have some Firmicutes. Comparing one sample with others of similar gender, diet and age is only useful if I know whether or not the other people sampled are healthy or not. There should be enough data to correlate the percentage of Firmicutes with body mass index, or at least a few answers to questions about health and weight. This is just one example.
Ethnicity in and of itself isn't a useful comparison. It bothers me that there are comparisons between "Western," "Venezuela," and "Malawi," as if charting these differences alone were in any way useful. There is no reason to bash the diet of all humans living in the Western world - some are healthy people who eat and exercise well and live to a healthy old age. That, and being "Western" is not homogeneous! To lump together Italians and Greeks eating a healthy Mediterranean diet, with obese Americans eating industrial food will result in a pool of data that tells you absolutely nothing! We also don't know if the Venezuelans and Malawians sampled were city-dwellers eating mostly canned and dried foods from a supermarket just like any other on the planet, or whether they were rural farmers who mostly eat the food that they grow. Unless the sample identifies specific genotypes, diets, lifestyles, or states of health, comparisons are just a spatter of meaningless dots, nothing more.
To be fair, the American Gut Project does give participants access to data as it accrues, and research is still in the early stages. Let's see how the work develops.
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