For Patients

The Microbiome and You

We are partnering with teens and parents in the Durham, North Carolina area to work together to understand the best ways to help control weight and get back into shape!

Our bodies are covered, inside and out, with microbes of all kinds! Crazy as that sounds, it gets even cooler!  We might think of microbes like bacteria and viruses as the “bad guys” that cause us to feel sick with things like colds, cases of pneumonia, and urinary tract infections. True, some microbes do these “bad” things, but most microbes are our partners, changing all sorts of ways our bodies look and feel and work for us.

Scientists and doctors think that microbes are a key part of how we use energy from all the foods we eat! They also think that they might be a key part of how our weight goes up and goes down.  As scientists and doctors, we want to learn about how microbes help make these changes to help you and your medical team keep weight off, get weight off when we want it off, and help to keep it off once we have weights that are healthy for us.

Understanding how microbes work with our bodies is a team challenge! Doctors, scientists, you, and your family have to think and work together to figure this out and come up with new ways to help you and other kids stay healthy now and as you grow up.

Want to learn more?

Our Clinical Team 

The Pediatric Obesity Observational Prospective Trial

Educational materials about the study, the microbiome, and you

 

Already enrolled?

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