An international team of scientists has studied diaper samples of nearly 650 healthy 1-year-old babies for 5 years and has discovered 10,000 species of viruses, most of them unknown until now. Far from causing children to be sick, those viruses are thought to be true allies, playing an important role in protecting us from chronic diseases.

An international collaboration of scientists identified 248 viral families in nappy samples, 232 of which were never described before. Acknowledged for their contribution, these babies will be forever registered in the virome databases, as the scientists named the new families after their first names.

Viruses are the unknown studied members of the gut microbiome. A new metagenomic analysis in healthy adults reveals that fecal viruses show a high stability, individual specificity, and correlation with the bacterial microbiome for 1 year.

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