The community of microbes (bacteria, fungi and viruses) in our gut – the gut microbiome – is sensitive to many environmental factors and helps shape health. It may ‘therefore play a role in health disparities’ affecting people who belong to historically marginalised groups – whether based on race, gender or sexual identity – who have increased risks of worse health outcomes.
A group of leading US scientists led by Northwestern University in Illinois argue in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that ‘a greater understanding of how gut microbiome affects health in minoritised population can lead to targeted treatments to help redress the balance’.
While the gut microbiome can protect the gut from colonisation by pathogens, reduce inflammation an influence brain function, the scientist note the gut microbiome ‘may respond to and help perpetuate the structural inequities caused by racism and other forms of discrimination’, reported medicalnewstoday.com.
They emphasise environmental factors linked to lower socioeconomic status which adversely affect the composition and diversity of the gut microbiome include: more caesarean deliveries; less breastfeeding of infants; a less healthful diet; overuse of antibiotics; and poor access to green spaces.
The authors conclude: ‘Because the environments that drive gut microbiome composition are modifiable, it represents an important tool for mitigating the impact of structural inequities and their downstream health consequences.’ Lead author Professor Kate Amato commented: ‘Research has implicated the microbiome in most chronic diseases, and we know there are disparities in most chronic diseases in which higher morbidity is observed in minoritised populations.’
She noted a study of Chicago residents which found socioeconomic status accounted for up to 22% of the person-to-person variation in diversity of composition of the adult gut microbiome and a UK study which compared twins with divergent socioeconomic status to account for genetic and family influences also found lower socioeconomic status had less diverse gut microbiota.
The authors conclude: ‘The same social gradients that predict disparities in major classes of disease also predict variation in the gut microbiome. These relationships underscore the likely role of the gut microbiome in mediating socially driven health disparities.’
