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Our bacteria travel everywhere with us

Researchers attempting to understand microbiome, how it affects our health
Dylan Gilbert, 7, of Naperville, Ill., demonstrates how he helped collect samples of bacteria from his foot during a 2012 study. Dylan’s father, microbiologist Jack Gilbert of Argonne National Laboratory, led the Home Microbiome Project that analyzed bacteria in seven homes around the country, including his own.

WASHINGTON – Sorry, clean freaks. No matter how well you scrub your home, it’s covered in bacteria from your own body. And if you pack up and move, new research shows, you’ll rapidly transfer your unique microbial fingerprint to the doorknobs, countertops and floors in your new house, too.

In fact, researchers who studied seven families in Illinois, Washington state and California could easily match up who lived where using their microscopic roommates, almost like CSI for germs.

The study is part of an effort to understand how the trillions of mostly beneficial bacteria that live in and on our bodies – what’s called the human microbiome – interact with bugs in the environment to affect our health.

“We have so little information about where the microbes come from that shape our microbiome, whether it’s for health or disease,” said microbiologist Jack Gilbert of the Argonne National Laboratory and University of Chicago.

Right at birth, babies start picking up microbes on the skin, in the nose, in the gut that eventually make up living communities that will share their bodies throughout life.

Many of these bugs play critical roles in digestion, the immune system and other health-inducing factors. Others may make it easier to gain weight or influence disease. What shapes the balance of good bugs and bad is a huge scientific question.

Hospital studies make clear that someone who already is sick can catch a new infection from pathogenic bacteria left behind by a previous patient.

In contrast, the new study examines healthy people, and it marks an important step: Beginning to show what’s normal in a regular home, said Dr. Lisa Helbling Chadwick of the National Institutes of Health. That’s a key question before scientists can explore how to possibly create healthier homes.

“You have to think about the microbiome of your home as part of your home’s immune system,” said Chadwick, of NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, who wasn’t involved with Gilbert’s project. “Instead of relying on killing bugs to stop the spread of infection, maybe we need to cultivate better bugs.”



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