Blood microbiome theory: debunked.
Recent research has debunked the idea of a blood microbiome, showing that while bacteria may occasionally enter the bloodstream, they do not form a stable, interacting community in healthy individuals.
There’s really no such thing as a blood microbiome, it turns out.
For a long time, doctors and scientists believed that human blood was completely free of bacteria, a belief that dates back to the 1960s. Back then, some studies, like those by Tedeschi, found signs of active bacteria in the blood of perfectly healthy people. This sparked a debate, as it went against the conventional wisdom that blood in healthy humans should be germ-free.
Challenging this idea wasn’t easy. Part of the problem was that many of the techniques used to study bacteria in blood weren’t reliable because these bacteria could be dormant, making them hard to detect. Plus, even with modern tools like very sensitive DNA tests, only tiny amounts of bacterial DNA could be found.
In the past, scientists thought that bacteria might occasionally slip into the bloodstream through small cuts in the skin or other minor injuries. With new technologies now available, researchers have conducted a thorough study to put this issue to rest once and for all.
