The UNSW Microbiome Research Centre needs your help with our iconic Healthy Optimal Australian Microbiome (HOAM) Study. We’ve already gathered samples from more than 250 really healthy folks, including some cognitively well very old senior adults who are 95. Our goal is to figure out what a healthy microbiome looks like and also find specific indicators in the microbiome for certain diseases, like dementia and obesity.
Once we have this info, we want to create new microbiome treatments to help people with a number of diseases. We have just received funding from NSW Health to develop a product that transplants healthy gut bacteria (Faecal Microbiota Transplant). We hope this might slow down dementia or help with chronic obesity.
Before we can make this treatment, we need to understand more about the microbiome in dementia and obesity. So far, 14 people with dementia and 13 with obesity have generously given us samples to help us find the specific microbiome patterns linked to dementia or obesity. We aim to get samples from 100 people, so we still have a long way to go.
We hope that you can share our study with your patients and network.
For more information, visit out website: www.mrc.unsw.edu.au?HOAM