Probiotics: Healthy Gut Bacteria Could Ward Off Age-Related Disease

In the quest to determine why some people remain in good physical and mental health until a very old age and others don't, scientists working with fruit flies suggest that a factor of healthy aging could be found in the gut.

Other recent studies have begun connecting diseases such as diabetes and Parkinson's to changes in gut bacteria, although they have not pinpointed the ideal composition.

"Age-onset decline is very tightly linked to changes within the community of gut microbes," says senior author David Walker of the University of California, Los Angeles in the US. "With age, the number of bacterial cells increase substantially and the composition of bacterial groups changes."

The research team used fruit flies because of their short life span -- which lasts an average of eight weeks -- and the diverse ages at which they die.

"One of the big questions in the biology of aging relates to the large variation in how we age and how long we live," says Walker.

What's more, scientists have identified all the genes of the fruit fly, and are able to switch them on and off individually.

Springboarding off previous research in which they observed that the flies develop leaky guts within days before dying, they analyzed the gut bacteria -- collectively referred to as the microbiota -- of more than 10,000 female flies.

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