What about your gut virome?

Did you realise that viruses make up most of our gut microbial population?

In fact they out number our other microbes by 10 times, yet only a small percentage have been sequenced.

These viruses are

Eukaryotic, which infect human cells
Bacteriophages or Phages, which infect bacteria and make up over 90% of our viral community
Archaeal and Plant viruses, sourced from food and the environment

What’s the role of these viruses - healthful or harmful?

Our virome is a key modulator of our health and disease, and is especially important to our immune system development and responses. This happens both directly and indirectly. ASM reports that…

Phages travel through the intestinal barrier to directly interact with immune cells
Can regulate the release of immune compounds by shaping the makeup and output of gut microbes
This can influence our cognitive function via the gut–brain axis

Like our gut microbiome, our gut virome can also have a negative impact on our health.

Gut viruses have been implicated in colorectal cancer, obesity, T2 diabetes and IBD. It’s thought that a disturbed gut virome leads to unhealthy interactions with the immune system, leading to inflammation and disease.

In short, a healthy gut virome is vital for a healthy gut microbiome, and gut virome imbalance or dysbiosis may predispose someone to disease.

What impacts the development and health of our gut virome?

Diet and age are important. At birth we have very few gut viruses. This changes over time, depending on how a baby is born and fed. During childhood our virome develops until it becomes less dynamic with age.

Diet, gender, location, urbanisation and stress also impact the health of our virome.

What can you do to look after your gut virome?

I couldn’t find anything on this. But I imagine it’s similar to how you nurture a healthy gut microbiome i.e. you need to nurture your terrain, where these helpful microbes live and confer so many crucial benefits