Key points from article :
Gut microbiome is influential on long-term health and late life mortality, to perhaps a similar degree as exercise.
Various populations of microbial life found in the gut change with age.
Gut microbial composition of centenarians has consistently been reported to differ from that of younger people.
Microbial genera associated with healthy elderly populations...are all highly variable across populations.
Regional differences in diet mean that there is unlikely to be one optimal gut microbiome to promote longevity.
..human diet does vary around the world, and the way in which diet interacts with the gut microbiome.
Universally beneficial changes can be made to any aged microbiome, such as enabling the immune system to remove problem microbes.
Early approaches to therapies involve universal, narrow improvements; personalized medicine is more challenging problem.
Study by NTU & Karolinska Institutet published in Frontiers in Microbiology.
