VIDEO: How the microbiome influences biliary health

Editor’s note: This is an automatically generated transcript, which has been slightly edited for clarity. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

Microbiome is obviously playing an important role here, but one which we don’t quite understand very well. We know in a disease like primary sclerosing cholangitis, known as PSC, that the microbiome is abnormal. There are fewer species of bacteria groups in the microbiome. We know that there are several organisms that have been cited as possibly playing a role in the pathogenesis of PSC.

This remains speculation at the moment, and that includes a Klebsiella species and a Proteus species, and much remains to be further studied. There’s a cart and a horse situation. We don’t really know whether the disease is altering the microbiome or whether the microbiome is somehow altered in contributing to the pathogenesis of the disease.