News & Views in 2019

A new study provides evidence that colonization of germ-free mice with faecal bacteria from healthy infants can protect against signs of cow’s milk allergy in mice. The results from this and other studies raise the intriguing question of whether the gut microbiota can be manipulated for food allergy prevention and therapy.

Two recent papers show that probiotics colonize the gut in permissive volunteers only and delay the reconstitution of the microbiome after antibiotics treatment. In the absence of any clinical readouts, it is still difficult to extrapolate these observations in terms of short-term or long-term health consequences for patients.

A new study of a fibroblast growth factor 19 analogue in patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) provides provocative results. The data challenge alkaline phosphatase levels as the appropriate surrogate end point in PSC trials and highlight alternatives, urging efforts to identify better clinical end points for this disease.

Over the past decade, many studies have revealed the importance of the gut microbiome in disease development and treatment, including in cancer. Because both host genetics and the gut microbiome can influence host phenotype and treatment outcome, there is an urgent need to develop precision medicine and personalize dietary supplementation based on an individual’s microbiome.