The French are called upon to make an intimate donation and bequeath their stool to science in order to elucidate the mysteries of their microbiota.
This general call for donations of faeces was launched in mid-September by the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE) and by hospitals in Paris.
Entitled “Le French Gut”, this vast and unusual research project aims to collect 100,000 samples of feces by 2027 to map what is going on in the stomachs and examine the links between the intestinal microbiota and the evolution of certain common illnesses.
The goal? To deepen knowledge about the role of the hundreds of millions of bacteria that populate the stomachs of children in the Republic in the hope of developing personalized treatments to combat the diseases of this century, including diabetes, obesity, cancer, allergies and chronic bowel disease. How ? By taking one small step to the small corner to take science one step further.
“We thought it was going to be a little taboo. I admit it’s an unusual gesture, but it was very well received. In three weeks, 15,000 people have registered”, rejoices researcher Joël Doré, research director at INRAE.
“A pilot phase is already underway with 3,000 samples taken from sick people. The enthusiasm is there, but you also need to have enough teams to go and collect the self-collections made by the participants”, he specifies.
Armed with a stick provided with the return envelope, the guinea pigs of this national project will also have to answer about twenty questions on their diet, their lifestyles and their state of health. “We also want to know if people live in the city or the countryside, if they were born naturally or by caesarean section. We even obtained the possibility of connecting to the national health system to know the medical history of our participants and in particular to know the number of times they received antibiotics. The aim is to determine whether there are predictors of disease or good health. These data will open up endless possibilities for research,” says the research director at INRAE’s microbiology unit enthusiastically.
This call is part of the larger Million Microbiome of Humans (MMHP) project, launched in 2019 to create a global data bank on the microbiomes that squat in particular the intestines, skin and mouth of the human species and to do the genetic sequencing. Sweden, China, Denmark and Latvia are already participating in this global initiative.
Exploration
The French Gut limits its research to fecal samples to completely sequence the genome of the myriads of bacteria, yeasts, fungi and other organisms that line the digestive system of the French. Half of the candidates recruited will be in perfect health and the other half will be made up of people with various diseases or intestinal and neuropsychiatric disorders.
“Our first objective is to see if there are microbial signatures that would be predictive of certain diseases. We already know that there were changes in the microbiota, for example, in people with liver problems or autism,” explains Joël Doré. In neuropsychiatry, studies have notably observed an altered microbiota in people with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, he says. “Our approach will be to see if this is true and if there is a causal link between the two. »
Other experiments have revealed that transferring the microbiota of autistic patients to perfectly healthy mice leads to autistic behavior in them, explains Joël Doré. In an experimental setting, researchers in Arizona grafted healthy fecal microbiota to autistic children, then noted beneficial effects on their social behavior.
To date, however, faecal microbiota transplantation is only licensed to treat persistent infections with the bacteria It’s hard. “In all other contexts, this is still limited to the research setting”, explains the researcher, who is examining the impact of the microbiota on the receptivity to chemotherapy treatments in patients with blood cancer.
Multiple profiles
In the land of the Mediterranean diet, what do we expect to find in our stomachs? “We expect to observe a very high variability of microbiota, with two or three main profiles. Some with very rich microbiota and others with impoverished microbiota, more at risk of developing certain diseases,” says Joël Doré.
“Our wish is that this information on the microbiota will become a tool for the medicine of tomorrow, to better treat certain patients and above all better prevent certain diseases. »