Digestive diseases and sciences
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With the advent of next-generation sequencing approaches, there has been a renaissance in the microbiome field. Microbial taxonomy and function can now be characterized relatively easily and rapidly-no longer mandating complex culturing approaches. With this renaissance, there is now a strong and growing appreciation for the role of the microbiome (referring to microbes and their genomes) in modulating many facets of physiology-including overall immunity. ⋯ Additionally, data regarding the impact of gut microbes on cancer immunotherapy response will be discussed, as will strategies to manipulate the microbiome to enhance therapeutic responses. These efforts to date are not completely optimized; however, there is evidence of efficacy though much additional work is needed in this space. Nonetheless, it is clear that the microbiome plays a central role in health and disease, and strategies to manipulate it in cancer and overall precision health are being explored.
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While there are numerous medical comorbidities associated with ASD, gastrointestinal (GI) issues have a significant impact on quality of life for these individuals. Recent findings continue to support the relationship between the gut microbiome and both GI symptoms and behavior, but the heterogeneity within the autism spectrum requires in-depth clinical characterization of these clinical cohorts. ⋯ Although there is still much to discover about the brain-gut-microbiome axis in ASD, microbially mediated therapies, specifically probiotics and fecal microbiota transplantation have shown promise in the treatment of GI symptoms in ASD, with potential benefit to the core behavioral symptoms of ASD as well. Future research and clinical trials must increasingly consider complex phenotypes in ASD in stratification of large datasets as well as in design of inclusion criteria for individual therapeutic interventions.