Nearly 10% of individuals in the United States suffer from type 2 diabetes, and the associated costs are hundreds of billions of dollars. Several studies have correlated microbiome alterations with the presence of diabetes, and studies in mice have shown that changes in the microbiome can lower glucose levels, putting the mice at risk for diabetes. The iHMP plans on studying diabetes and its associations with the microbiome through a longitudinal study.

Specifically the iHMP will be testing the following hypotheses:
1) "Environmental stress causes dynamic changes in specific biological pathways in the human body, and these changes lead to alteration of the human microbiome...including glucose."
2) "Some of the changes may affect the [hosts' gene regulation] leading to...biological alteraions that extend well beyond the time of the stress period"
3) "Different physiological stresses, such as respiratory viral infections and diet changes, may have common effects in both the host and microbiome"
Source

The iHMP will investigate these hypotheses by enrolling a cohort of 60 adults at risk for diabetes. The study will last 3 years and during these years the researchers expect at least 10 individuals to become diabetic. They will sample the patients' stool, nasal, urine, skin, tongue, and blood microbiomes every 2-3 months, which will measure a full suite of biologics that include bacteria, lipid content, metabolites, and proteins. Sampling will also occur during periods of 'stress' that include mental stress as well as illnesses and physical trauma.

As always the results of the study will be made available, and we will be checking in on their progress.

This blog post concludes our series on the iHMP (HMP2). We hope that anyone reading this will continue to check in on the iHMP progress, as we hope the role of the microbiome in pregnancy, IBD, and diabetes continues to unfold.

The human microbiome project (HMP) was a large scale program sponsored by the NIH's common fund, which sought to define the healthy human microbiome. The HMP was a success, and its main findings serve as a foundation upon which most microbiome science is built (cited almost 700 times in 2 years!). Perhaps it was the unexpected successor to the human genome project (HGP), but it is already nearing the HGP in influence.

Because of its success the NIH is sponsoring the human microbiome project 2 (HMP2), otherwise known as the integrative human microbiome project (iHMP). Where HMP1 investigated what the human microbiome looked like, iHMP is looking at how the human microbiome is associated with various "exemplars of microbiome-associated human conditions".

These three conditions are:

1) "Pregnancy, including those that end in preterm birth"
2) "Gut disease onset, using inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) as a model"
3) "Respiratory viral infection and onset of type 2 diabetes (T2D)"

iHMP will track large cohorts of individuals for each of these conditions for 3 years to perform complete longitudinal studies. Many variables and data sets will be tracked, compiled, and made public. Of course bacteria will be sampled, but, for the first time, comprehensive sampling of metabolites from those bacteria will also be performed. The results of iHMP will be published periodically and will last from 2013 to 2016.

We would like to thank the entire HMP consortium of scientific investigators for their efforts, but especially Lita Proctor, who has championed the microbiome within the NIH for many years. Her perspective on iHMP, which was recently published in Cell, was the basis for this blog post and from where the quotations are drawn.

We will will kick off a 3 part blog series here on the AMI blog where I review the 3 microbiome conditions that are being studied in the iHMP. Check back on Monday for a post discussion about how the microbiome is associated with pregnancy, and how the iHMP plans to perform its investigation.

Type 2 diabetes and the microbiome. iHMP blog #4

The human microbiome project, part 2. iHMP blog #1