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  • OUTLOOK

Could a bacteria-stuffed pill cure autoimmune diseases?

Researchers are investigating how the community of microbes living in the gut might help people with multiple sclerosis, lupus and type 1 diabetes.
  1. Eric Bender

    1. Eric Bender is a science writer in Newton, Massachusetts.

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For Gregg Silverman, a rheumatologist at New York University, the day a women he was treating for lupus was visited by her identical twin sister was a watershed moment. The sister was a picture of health, with a one-year-old child in her arms. Silverman’s patient, meanwhile, was receiving kidney dialysis and, despite his best efforts, her condition was getting worse. “Genetics was not going to explain this difference,” says Silverman. The revelation launched him on a decades-long quest to seek out other factors that drive the puzzling autoimmune disease.

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Nature 577, S12-S13 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00197-z

This article is part of Nature Outlook: The gut microbiome, an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content.

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