Vanessa Sperandio, professor and chair of the medical microbiology and immunology department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has studied how the connect between the intestinal system and the brain — called the gut-brain axis — plays into addiction. Sperandio explained that E. coli, the bacterium famous for making people violently ill, always lives in our guts. She found that when there’s an overgrowth of E. coli, a person becomes more susceptible to cocaine addiction.
“If you have an expansion of E. coli … you enhance … cocaine addiction behaviors, cocaine seeking behaviors, cocaine administration behaviors,” she said.
There are countless examples of gut bacteria influencing our lives. Maggie Alexander, an assistant professor of medical microbiology and immunology at UW-Madison, is studying how the gut-brain axis affects autoimmune diseases, where the immune system attacks healthy parts of the body.
“There’s been this really strong connection of microbiota and autoimmune conditions,” Alexander said,