Connection between gut microbiota and bone health identified in mice returning from space

Let’s head to space today, with Géraldine Zamansky, journalist for Health Magazine on France 5. Because a new solution against osteoporosis could be identified thanks to “nautical mice”, mice that have stayed in the Station international space.

franceinfo: Could the problems of bone degradation in humans be compensated by our intestinal microbiota?

Geraldine Zamansky: Absolutely. It is the fruit of an astonishing adventure told to me by Wenyuan Shi and Joseph Bedree, the two microbiologists of the American Forsythe Institute, at the origin of this discovery. The adventure of 20 mice, who left for just over a month on the International Space Station with colleagues from Thomas Pesquet. Their mission? Live in weightlessness, like astronauts, and pass, like them, many medical examinations before, during and after their stay. To follow here more particularly their bone density.

Because you have probably already heard of it: when the body is no longer subject to gravity, the bones weaken. Normally, they renew themselves constantly, thanks to the stimulation generated by the movements and the weight of the body. Up there, without this weight, nothing works. And on the scale of a mouse’s lifetime, a month in weightlessness would be the equivalent of a year for Thomas Pesquet.

So these mouse-nauts made it possible to “fast-track” decipher the processes associated with this bone degradation?

There you have it, and with, at the heart of the identified mechanisms, the intestinal microbiota. It’s not very glamorous, but easy to study, through the stools of mice brought back to earth. Joseph Bedree explained to me that they found an increased number of two families of bacteria there. And by studying them closely, they discovered that these bacteria would be able to manufacture molecules known for their role in bone stimulation.

And this production seems to be confirmed by the presence of these “stimulants” in the results of blood analyzes of mouse-nauts. It’s as if, Wenyuan Shi enthused, the microbiota has triggered a compensatory mechanism to combat the effects of weightlessness on the bones.

So this famous intestinal flora could contribute to the reconstitution of bones? And maybe not just in space?

Of course, impossible not to think about it. Even if he recalls that science requires additional proof, Wenyuan Shi believes in this connection between our microbiota and our bone health. And that would help find new treatments for osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is the very earthly version of the astronaut problem. Loss of bone density in the elderly. The idea would be, for example, to properly identify these “repairing” bacteria and to provide the right dose to the intestinal flora.

The study