Analysis of metadata from The American Gut Project, aiming to find relationships between the presence of emigraine headache in subjects, the coopresence of gastrointestinal disorders, and the characteristics of the their gut microbiota.
The gut-brain axis (GBA) consists of bidirectional communication/cross-talk between the gastrointestinal GI system and the central nervous system (CNS), linking emotional and cognitive centers of the brain with peripheral intestinal functions. Several researches have shown how neulogical diseases, specifically in this case migraine, are directly and indirectly associated with some gastrointestinal (GI) disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and celiac disease (CD). Migraine is one of the leading causes of disability in the adult population, and the underlying causes are not yet fully understood, just as the mechanisms explaining how the gut and brain may interact in migraine patients are not entirely clear. Several studies suggest how this gut-brain interaction (cross-talks) may be influenced and mediated by several factors, among which the profile of the gut microbiota seems to assume great importance, and growing evidence implies that gut-brain-mediated crosstalk may contribute to the pathogenesis of migraine. The American Gut project is the largest crowdsourced citizen science project to date. Fecal, oral, skin, and other body site samples collected from thousands of participants represent the largest human microbiome cohort in existence. Detailed health and lifestyle and diet data associated with each sample is enabling us to deeply examine associations between the human microbiome and factors such as diet (from vegan to near carnivore and everything in between), season, amount of sleep, and disease states such as IBD, diabetes, or autism spectrum disorder-as well as many other factors not listed here.