Close, Social Contact Can Shape a Gut Microbiome, Sometimes Making it More Alike

Our gut microbiome plays a major role in our health, and luckily, we’re not short on advice for how to take care of it. Most recommendations focus on diet, like prioritizing fiber and probiotic-rich foods, along with lifestyle tweaks such as getting enough sleep and managing stress.

But we might need to add one more factor to the list: the people we spend time with. It turns out that those closest to us can influence our internal microbial world in subtle but meaningful ways. A new study from the University of East Anglia (UEA) explores this idea by analyzing the gut bacteria of Seychelles warblers, a small songbird living on an isolated island, the perfect natural laboratory.

Previous human studies have hinted at this effect, showing that spouses and housemates tend to share more similar gut microbiomes than strangers. Now, this bird study, published in Molecular Ecology, provides clearer evidence that social closeness beyond shared environments can shape microbiome composition.