Yeah, I think these studies are very interesting. First of all, the data shows us that there are specific gut taxa that track with the MRI changes of neurodegeneration. So we see that for some specific forms of neurodegeneration, we are able to implicate some taxa and say that, okay, there is an association here. And we’re able to do this. The important thing about this study is that we’re like all our participants are preclinical...
Yeah, I think these studies are very interesting. First of all, the data shows us that there are specific gut taxa that track with the MRI changes of neurodegeneration. So we see that for some specific forms of neurodegeneration, we are able to implicate some taxa and say that, okay, there is an association here. And we’re able to do this. The important thing about this study is that we’re like all our participants are preclinical. So we could even see these things before the onset of symptoms. And we do this independent of the amyloid or even tau status. And so this tells us that in the future, we could get to a point where we could stratify risk of a patient based on their stool sample instead of going through expensive MRIs. I mean, now there are blood-based biomarkers coming up, but this would also be an easy, cheap way, which would be also very equitable because as of now, there are some barriers related to the blood-based biomarkers in terms of places it could be and whatnot. With these, hopefully, we wouldn’t have those issues. So basically, this study actually supports that the gut microbiome could be used as a risk stratification signal and also potentially a prevention target. I know there are studies currently ongoing that are looking at using fecal transplants, using probiotics. But then again, we’re in the era of evidence-based medicine. And so we would need very large studies, randomized control trials to ensure that the effects we are seeing can be seen on a large scale and that it’s applicable or can be generalized. And then, again, I already alluded to this, but we have seen in this study especially that there are some region-specific factors or region-specific changes. Some things you just see in the hippocampus, sometimes just gray matter is changing, sometimes just white matter. And so it’s important that for the next round of studies or the next randomized controlled trials, these are things that people are looking out for and not necessarily just in general, the person has atrophy. No, we need to understand what kind of atrophy, what’s less, what’s normal. And then we kind of go from there. So I think this is also a study that helps to structure future studies. And that would be helpful in kind of pushing the field forward in terms of getting to understand, getting to understanding better the pathophysiology and how to treat. And lastly, I would say that this study, for instance, it motivates longitudinal and interventional work to test whether modulating the taxa could slow things like hippocampal loss, because we’ve seen that a lot where a specific taxa is having such an effect on the hippocampus. Could modulating that specific taxa through fecal transplant, through probiotics, would that help in preventing or slowing down that loss? And I think that would be an interesting thing to look at going forward.
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