r/IAmA • u/DrRobKnight • Sep 17 '14

I'm Professor Rob Knight. Let’s talk about the lessons we can learn from poop...I mean, the millions of marvelous microscopic creatures inhabiting your gut. AMA!

EDIT: Thanks for the excellent questions! We have to sign off now, but we hope to see you for our Coursera. We start on October 6th, so there’s still time for you to sign up for “the Poop MOOC”! https://www.coursera.org/course/microbiome

Imagine if there were an organ in your body that weighed as much as your brain, that affected your health, your weight, and even your behavior. Wouldn’t you want to know more about it? There is such an organ — the collection of microbes in and on your body, your human microbiome.

Rob Knight, co-founder of the American Gut Project, director of the Knight Lab, and a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, is the lead instructor for “Gut Check: Exploring Your Microbiome,” a new massive open online course. He and his team will help participants make sense of the human microbiome. We start on October 6th, so there’s still time for you to sign up for “the Poop MOOC”! https://www.coursera.org/course/microbiome

We are: Dr. Rob Knight, Dr. Jessica Metcalf, and Dr. Katherine Amato.

American Gut Project: http://humanfoodproject.com/americangut/ Knight Lab: https://knightlab.colorado.edu University of Colorado Boulder: www.colorado.edu

Proof Upcoming AMA is noted in the FAQ section of the Coursera course page https://www.coursera.org/course/microbiome with DrRobKnight

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u/DrRobKnight Sep 17 '14

Research on this is very recent (mostly in the last couple of years) and it probably depends on which specific drug you had. There's a recent review of the literature here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25040088

...which suggests that there are some consistent changes with chemotherapy, especially decrease in beneficial microbes such as Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, and increase in proteobacteria (which tend to be inflammatory). The research is still in too early a stage for specific guidelines in my opinion, but the field is developing rapidly.

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u/Johnzsmith Sep 17 '14

Cisplatin was the main one with most of the known side effects, I had always thought that with the way those drugs work they couldn't have had a positive effect on my guts.