Pressure From the Bugs Within - Gut Microbiota and Human Arterial Hypertension

Kurzfassung

The human body houses a large number of diverse outnumbering other organisms such as archaea and fungi bacteria by orders of magnitude. The whole community of organisms is commonly referred to as human microbiota, whereas microbiome is defined as the collective genomes of these organisms. Whereas earlier estimates suggested that the number of bacteria colonizing the human body may exceed the number of human cells 10-fold, more recent estimates suggest that the ratio between bacteria and human cells may be closer to one.1 In any case, the microbial colonization is vast, and it may be no surprise that these microorganisms interact with and affect the human body. The study by Sun et al in this issue illustrates the importance of this interaction for human arterial hypertension (Figure). The gut appears to be particularly important in that regard given its colonization with ≈100 trillion microbial cells comprising >1000 bacterial species, the large surface area, contact to food, and its involvement in local and systemic immune responses. The composition of the gut microbiota is highly variable between subjects because each subject harbors a unique set of microbial species.