Rutgers scientists have developed a new stool-based metric that distinguishes healthy guts from diseased ones by measuring how bacteria interact, not just which microbes are present.
Published recently week in Science, the tool tracked disease progression in colorectal cancer and could lead to earlier detection and more predictable microbiome therapies.
Healthy and diseased digestive systems behave like two distinct ecological states, driven not by individual microbes but by how entire bacterial communities compete and cooperate, according to the study.
To measure how bacterial communities shift between health and disease, the team developed a new metric called the Ecological Network Balance Index, or ENBI, which captures whether microbial communities are dominated by competitive or cooperative interactions, according to a release.
Applied to stool samples, ENBI consistently separated healthy individuals from patients across multiple diseases.
Most impressive was that in colorectal cancer, the index rose as the disease progressed.
Juan Bonachela, an assistant professor with the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources at the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, and a senior author of the study, said in a release that the breakthrough came after the scientists started asking how some bacteria are related to other bacteria instead of which bacteria are there.
The findings show how disease emerges as microbial communities reorganize, according to Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, of the Henry Rutgers Professor of Microbiome and Health in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, and an author of the study.
Bonachela said in a release that the insights and the tool could eventually help doctors identify problems earlier and why other treatments might fail.
Earlier this week, scientists at Rutgers Health announced they are pioneering a nutrition-based strategy to combat Alzheimer’s disease, focusing on a specific healthy fat that may help the brain “heal itself.” The clinical trial was led by the Rutgers Brain Health Institute.
