Antibiotics have sex-specific effects on the gut microbiome in rats
cedars-sinai.org
cedars-sinai.org
One thing that has become common in some facilities is housing males and females in separate rooms. Female mice and rats get pretty stressed when you house them next to males, or when you handle males first and then females after. This is a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situation, because either these rats were housed in different rooms, which could cause microbiome differences, or they were housed together, which could cause stress, which could cause microbiome differences.
I think overall, this study is reasonable, and the fact that it confirms previous studies bolsters the hypothesis, but I'm not sure how you actually tease these out without a mechanistic proposition.
Lastly, based on my experience, there's something a little odd about their weight data. We use weight as a loose proxy for wellness, so it's regularly measured. The body weight for both the males and females are about 30g higher than I'd expect for this age (8 woa). Most rats and mice are very consistent weight for a given age, and this is just a minor red flag, but it makes me wonder more about their husbandry.
Just my 2 cents.
What kind of manufacture do you think benefits from this outcome?
This makes me wonder why we don't take fecal samples before proscribing humans especially rigorous antibiotics so they can be used to repair the microbiome afterward.
We know gut flora plays an important role in our health and development.
The C.Diff study with fecal matter transplants was an eye opener, and we are definitely overlooking important data.
interesting study
That being said eat your Natto people :-)
I'm guessing (well, hoping) that everyone agrees that the male/female distinction is medically relevant. E.g., I'd get more from a visit to a urologist than to a gynecologist.
I think there's less agreement about the "di" part of "dimorphism". Obviously most humans fall pretty squarely into the "male" vs. "female" categories, but there's less agreement about there being precisely two, clearly delineated categories.
Some examples:
- hermaphrodites
- conjoined twins with different genders (insanely rare, IIUC)
- non-heterosexuals and transgender people, to the extent that those characteristics indicate underlying physiological differences
> non-heterosexuals and transgender
The discussion here is about biological sex and its medical implications. People who change their gender, or exhibit traits of the opposite gender, aren’t relevant to this conversation.
Edit: commenters below me make some good points that I didn’t consider when writing this. I slightly regret this comment now, but can’t delete it at this point. e.g: the fact that transgender people are relevant to this debate because of HRT, which is true, I didn’t think of that.
This seems obviously false. If the link is based around sex hormones, as an example, then being on HRT clearly changes your risk.
As with all things, correlation vs causation.
Well, they can be – treatment with e.g. hormone therapy has obvious physiological impacts with subsequent influence on the effect of other medical treatments.
Nobody serious doubts that there exist sex-linked physiological characteristics; in reality, the original statement that "sexual dimorphism is real" isn't intended to share knowledge, but a subtle signal about something else.
“Biological sex” is a catchall label for a wide basket of traits that tends to cluster in two large groups. Almost anything attributed to it is, on further examination, really a result of some more specific subset of those traits, which may overlap those certain individuals exhibit that are not stereotypical for their birth gender for whatever reason. So, yes, those differences matter.
Could you explain what you mean here?
When deciding what pronoun to use, biological sex clearly doesn't matter, when talking to a doctor, it may well matter. We can use the appropriate thing at the appropriate time, just as we do with, say, an adopted child, where most of the time you don't need to distinguish, but when it comes to inheritable disease it clearly matters. Likewise, saying "that female over there" when talking about a trans man is utterly useless to me because it doesn't help me identify them without pre-existing knowledge. Man/woman referring to gender identity clearly makes sense for casual conversation, someone's biological sex is none of your business in most cases.
Of course, our increased understanding also says that dimorphism is an oversimplification: the reality is that sexual traits are varied and it is much more of a spectrum, and better understanding of this medically should lead to more personalised medicine that is more effective.
This is especially true when it comes to trans people, if the issue is, for example, linked to oestrogen, then HRT can be more relevant than the chromosomes someone has.
Small N but as a layman it could be potentially significant. Perhaps hormonal changes could be monitored in fecal microbiomes.
I recently looked at a disease course over time for several hundred genes. I only used 6 animals per time point, and both the disease mice and non-disease mice have very little inter-mouse variation at each time point for the vast majority of the genes.