Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
Microbiome Research Initiative, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA, USA.
Trends Microbiol. 2020 May;28(5):329-330. doi: 10.1016/j.tim.2020.02.002. Epub 2020 Mar 4.
Manipulating the microbiome has enormous potential to treat important human diseases. Microbiome surveys are often used to identify potential therapeutic targets by finding associations between microbial elements and disease status. We argue that many reported associations between the microbiome and disease are incompatible with translational research because they are insufficiently specific. We encourage the clear specification of manipulable microbial elements that can be tested in follow-up randomized experiments, and we provide multiple examples of specific and nonspecific microbial elements.
微生物组的操纵具有治疗重要人类疾病的巨大潜力。通过寻找微生物与疾病状态之间的关联，微生物组调查通常用于确定潜在的治疗靶点。我们认为，由于不够具体，许多报道的微生物组与疾病之间的关联与转化研究是不兼容的。我们鼓励明确规定可在后续随机实验中进行测试的可操作微生物元素，并提供了多个具体和非具体微生物元素的示例。
