As we enter 2025, this is an opportune moment to look back at the latest scientific and medical advances in gut microbiome research during the past 12 months. The “Year at a Glance” document provides a concise overview of the latest research into the gut microbiome’s role in health and disease, while also shedding light on current and potential therapeutic interventions.

The latest consensus among international experts emphasizes the need to define a healthy gut microbiome by considering its microbial ecosystem characteristics, as well as the environmental and host influences on the microbiome. The term ‘dysbiosis’ is vague and has limited clinical applicability. Given that no two microbiomes are identical, a more realistic approach involves defining a spectrum of healthy microbiome configurations, while taking account of spatial and temporal variabilities. As we continue along the path toward identifying a healthy gut microbiome, it is essential to consider confounders that can obscure the genuine microbiome-disease relationships in microbiome studies, including the fecal microbial load, lifestyle, diet, and gut physiology.

2024 has also been a productive year in advancing the research into the influence of the microbiome, particularly the small intestine microbiome, on the onset and development of IBS. Gut Microbiota for Health attended the 4th IBS Days conference, which provided in-depth coverage of strategies for managing IBS based on the etiology of symptoms.

The potential of the gut microbiome is increasingly recognized in conditions beyond the gut, including metabolic syndrome and female urogenital health. Recent findings suggest Dysosmobacter welbionis and Adlercreutzia equolifaciens as potential novel next-generation bacteria for addressing obesity and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, respectively. The gut-bladder axis is also emerging as another dimension of microbiome health, and promising research suggests that probiotics may offer effective solutions to improve bacterial vaginosis and urinary tract infections that do not respond to mainstream treatments.

With the rise in antibiotic-resistant infections, bacteriophages are emerging as a potential alternative to address this significant public health challenge. For instance, recent findings indicate that batches of phages combined with antibiotics successfully eradicated the targeted bacteria in 61% of cases of acquired hospital infections. These findings provide new hope for treating refractory and resistant bacterial infections.

Additionally, researchers have introduced the term “organ-gut-microbiota axis” to describe the multi-directional pathways through which the trillions of microbes inhabiting the intestine interact with other body parts. While associations of gut microbiome and conditions beyond the gut are everywhere, only time will tell whether they will translate into meaningful additions to standard medical care.

In addition to these breakthrough discoveries, in 2024 our Gut Microbiota for Health digital community expanded to 170,000 members and the GMFH website recorded more than 940,000 page views. These trends highlight the growing interest among scientists, healthcare professionals, and the general public in harnessing the potential of the gut microbiome for health and disease.

Keep up to date with the most relevant research in gut microbiome by reading our 2024 Year at a Glance report.