Researchers found that cohabiting people share certain microbes regardless of the ‘proximity’ of their relationship. Siblings, parents and children all shared similar numbers of microbial strains.
Your flatmates may be living rent-free in your gut, too.
Romantic partners, however, shared more oral microbes, which the researchers attribute to kissing.
“Who we decide to share our homes with can have a huge influence on our microbiomes, which has potential consequences for our health,” said Vitor Heidrich of the University of Trento, Italy, first author and computational biologist at the University of Trento, Italy.
The team analysed 1,644 paired mouth and stool samples to see how microbes spread between healthy people living together, and how microbes move from the mouth to the gut within the same person.
