Inflammatory disease and the human microbiome

Abstract

The human body is a superorganism in which thousands of microbial genomes continually interact with the human genome. A range of physical and neurological inflammatory diseases are now associated with shifts in microbiome composition. Seemingly disparate inflammatory conditions may arise from similar disruption of microbiome homeostasis. Intracellular pathogens long associated with inflammatory disease are able to slow the innate immune response by dysregulating activity of the VDR nuclear receptor. This facilitates the ability of other species to gradually accumulate in tissue and blood, where they generate proteins and metabolites that significantly interfere with the body's metabolic processes. The microbes that contribute to this dysfunction are often inherited from family members. Immunosuppressive therapies for inflammatory disease allow pathogens driving these processes to spread with greater ease. In contrast to immunosuppression, treatments that stimulate the immune system seem to allow for reversal of this pathogen-induced genomic dysregulation.