A trailblazing study by Israeli researchers suggests that intestinal microbes may have a direct effect on the course of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the incurable, fatal neurodegenerative disease also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease that affected physicist Stephen Hawking.
Published today in Nature, the study by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science revealed that the progression of an ALS-like disease in lab mice was slowed after the mice received certain strains of gut microbes or substances known to be secreted by these microbes.