Abstract
Results from a mouse study suggest that transferring maternal gut microbes to babies susceptible to type 1 diabetes who have had their gut microbiome wiped out by treatment with antibiotics could reduce their risk of developing the auto-immune disease.
Significant changes to the gut microbiome can be seen before and at the onset of type 1 diabetes in humans, suggesting a possible causal link, but the exact mechanism of this is not yet clear.
Martin Blaser, director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine at Rutgers, and colleagues study a mouse model of type 1 diabetes. In previous work, his team found that early treatment with antibiotics led to gut microbiome disruption and quicker onset of diabetes in infant mice.
In this study, which is published in Cell Host & Microbe, the researchers found that transferring the maternal gut microbiota to young mice that had a disrupted gut microbiome from antibiotics seem to have a beneficial effect. It largely restored the gut microbiome and also stopped or slowed progression to diabetes by normalizing metabolic pathways.