Imbalance in gut microbial interactions as a marker of health and disease
Summary
Imbalances in the human gut microbiome, or dysbioses, are associated with multiple diseases but remain poorly understood. Existing biomarkers of dysbiosis fail to capture the ecological mechanisms that differentiate healthy from diseased microbiomes. We have developed a metric, the ecological network balance index (ENBI), that quantifies the balance between positive and negative microbial interactions. This metric was inspired by the phenomenology observed in a model for gut microbiome dyn
Content
# Imbalance in gut microbial interactions as a marker of health and disease
*Published: 2026 Feb 26*
Imbalances in the human gut microbiome, or dysbioses, are associated with
multiple diseases but remain poorly understood. Existing biomarkers of dysbiosis
fail to capture the ecological mechanisms that differentiate healthy from
diseased microbiomes. We have developed a metric, the ecological network balance
index (ENBI), that quantifies the balance between positive and negative
microbial interactions. This metric was inspired by the phenomenology observed
in a model for gut microbiome dynamics that we introduce in this work, which
revealed alternative stable states with distinct emergent microbial communities:
a healthy state dominated by negative interactions and a dysbiotic state
dominated by positive interactions. The ENBI robustly differentiates these
states in both simulated and empirical datasets spanning multiple diseases and
correlates with disease progression in conditions such as colorectal cancer,
which underscores its potential as a diagnostic tool.
DOI: 10.1126/science.ady1729