Microbiome Research Gets the Gates Bump
International; Probiotics Association
Money talks and we listen. Since the year 2000, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (over 50 billion USD in assets) has poured billions into tackling the world’s most pressing health problems such as malaria and infectious disease. Now the philanthropists are embracing gut microbes.
Like most of us in the probiotic industry, Bill and Melinda Gates believe in the promise of probiotics.
The Gates’s current interest lies in creating more specific formulas to target both malnutrition and obesity. The developing world especially is confronting what is termed a “nutrition transiton” where both undernutrition and over-nutrition exist side by side.
As research has demonstrated, stunting and obesity may be more likely if a baby’s microbiome isn’t seeded properly–ideally through vaginal delivery and healthy breast milk. That signature microbiome is fluid in the first year and then settles into an established community. Thus the first year is all important.
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