olliec
Senior Member
- Messages
- 111
- Location
- London, UK
I just got my results back from the British Gut Project (linked to the American Gut Project) to sequence my gut microbiota. I've done it with uBiome before. Two results stand out. One is that my levels of family Legionellaceae are 179x the average, and genus Vibrio is 41x average.
I read about the groups of bacteria and it looks like vibrio is shellfish food poisoning bacteria, which is intriguing to me as I have an allergy and don't eat shellfish. The other group's main members are legionella and coxiella burnetti (Q Fever). These are not viruses but bacteria so I do not think this relates to John Chia's work. I expect the result means probably either Coxiella or Legionella is present. I'm aware Q Fever is a known trigger for ME, but what is it doing in my gut?
I am moderately affected, but when I really overdo it (especially physically) my symptoms rapidly deteriorate into more obvious flu-like symptoms, including what certainly looks like a chest infection. I can't help but wonder if this pattern is potentially some chronic, latent infection (Coxiella) reactivating. Might I have found it? But I've no reason to know whether the presence of bacteria is a cause or just another symptom. Maybe a messed up immune system allows it to flourish.
I asked Tim Spector on Twitter (who runs British Gut project, and wrote the excellent book The Diet Myth) if I should be worried and he said "Sounds a bit worrying but worth talking to somebody and repeating test". I am a patient at the Royal Free and am seeing an immunologist there in December, but wanted to learn more about what this might mean before I go. I need to re-run the test to check the result.
I read about the groups of bacteria and it looks like vibrio is shellfish food poisoning bacteria, which is intriguing to me as I have an allergy and don't eat shellfish. The other group's main members are legionella and coxiella burnetti (Q Fever). These are not viruses but bacteria so I do not think this relates to John Chia's work. I expect the result means probably either Coxiella or Legionella is present. I'm aware Q Fever is a known trigger for ME, but what is it doing in my gut?
I am moderately affected, but when I really overdo it (especially physically) my symptoms rapidly deteriorate into more obvious flu-like symptoms, including what certainly looks like a chest infection. I can't help but wonder if this pattern is potentially some chronic, latent infection (Coxiella) reactivating. Might I have found it? But I've no reason to know whether the presence of bacteria is a cause or just another symptom. Maybe a messed up immune system allows it to flourish.
I asked Tim Spector on Twitter (who runs British Gut project, and wrote the excellent book The Diet Myth) if I should be worried and he said "Sounds a bit worrying but worth talking to somebody and repeating test". I am a patient at the Royal Free and am seeing an immunologist there in December, but wanted to learn more about what this might mean before I go. I need to re-run the test to check the result.