Poo may hold secret to tackling ageing: study

Associate Professor Claudio Nicoletti (left) of the University of Florence in Italy, and Dr David Vauzour, senior research fellow at the University of East Anglia in Britain, are co-leads of the research on faecal matter.

SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/ANN): From slathering mud to eating strange roots, people have tried different ways to stay young, but an experiment on mice involving faecal matter is giving hope that humans may slow down the ageing process while tackling conditions such as dementia.

Doctors have known for some time that faecal matter is a window to the trillions of good and bad bacteria, viruses and fungi living in the intestines, collectively known as the gut microbiome.