Researchers have discovered that microplastics, once ingested, travel from the gut to tissues such as the liver, kidneys, and brain, potentially causing significant health issues. The team’s findings emphasize the critical link between gut health and overall well-being, with ongoing studies exploring how diet and gut microbiota interact with microplastic absorption. Credit: SciTechDaily.com
Research continues to show the importance of gut health. If you don’t have a healthy gut, it affects the brain, it affects the liver and so many other tissues. So even imagining that the microplastics are doing something in the in the gut, that chronic exposure could lead to systemic effects.
Microplastics had migrated out of the gut into the tissues of the liver, kidney and even the brain, the team found. The study also showed the microplastics changed metabolic pathways in the affected tissues.“We could detect microplastics in certain tissues after the exposure,” Castillo says. “That tells us it can cross the intestinal barrier and infiltrate into other tissues.”
“It is changing the metabolism of the cells, which can alter inflammatory responses,” Castillo says. “During intestinal inflammation – states of chronic illness such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, which are both forms of inflammatory bowel disease – these macrophages become more inflammatory and they’re more abundant in the gut.
Castillo hopes that his research will help uncover the potential impacts microplastics are having to human health and that it will help spur changes to how society produces and filtrates plastics.“At the end of the day, the research we are trying to do aims to find out how this is impacting gut health,” he says. “Research continues to show the importance of gut health. If you don’t have a healthy gut, it affects the brain, it affects the liver and so many other tissues.