Mengying Zhang, Shao-Yu Chen, Yichao Lin, Xing-Xing YUAN
Gut microbiome medicine is a promising field in functional medicine, offering personalized treatment strategies for gastrointestinal disorders. Advanced metagenomic and metabolomic technologies have revealed the gut microbiome's systemic influence, extending to distant organs like the brain and lungs. While small molecules and genes facilitate these effects, the gut microbiota's greatest abundance and activity are concentrated in the gastrointestinal tract, particularly in the distal regions. The balance of microbial communities in the small and large intestines is crucial for gastrointestinal health. However, the dominance of pathogenic bacteria can disrupt this balance, leading to tissue damage and contributing to gastrointestinal disorders. Emerging interventions, such as probiotics, fecal microbiota transplantation, and dietary enrichment with short-chain fatty acids, show potential in restoring microbial balance, enhancing immune function, and potentially protecting against carcinogenesis. Current evidence from clinical trials and animal models supports the therapeutic role of gut microbiome modulation in reversing gastrointestinal disorders. However, variability in study outcomes highlights the need for further research to standardize these approaches for clinical practice. This review underscores the gut microbiome's pivotal role in gastrointestinal health and the therapeutic promise of functional medicine in addressing these disorders. This review also explores emerging interventions, such as phage therapy and engineered microbes, and provides comparative analyses of microbiota signatures and therapeutic approaches across different gastrointestinal disorders.