Your friends shape your microbiome — and so do their friends
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A shared meal, a kiss on the cheek: these social acts bring people together — and bring their microbiomes together, too. The more people interact, the more similar the make-up of their gut microorganisms is, even if individuals don’t live in the same household, a study1 shows.
The study also found that a person’s microbiome is shaped not only by their social contacts but also by the social contacts’ connections. The work is one of several studies2 that raise the possibility that health conditions can be shaped by the transmission of the microbiome between individuals, not just by diet and other environmental factors that affect gut flora.
In the quest to understand what shapes a person’s microbiome, social interactions are “definitely a piece of the puzzle that I think has been missing until recently”, says microbiologist Catherine Robinson at the University of Oregon in Eugene, who was not involved in the work.
