Babies have more than 200 previously unknown viral families within their gut. This large number came as a surprise to researchers from the University of Copenhagen (Shah SA et al, 2023), who recently studied the nappies of 647 Danish babies and made the first mapping of its kind.
The researchers found and mapped a total of 10,000 viral species in the children’s faeces – a number ten times larger than the number of bacterial species in the same children. These viral species are distributed across 248 different viral families, of which only 16 were previously known.
The researchers named the remaining 232 unknown viral families after the children whose nappies made the study possible. As a result, new viral families include names like Sylvesterviridae, Rigmorviridae and Tristanviridae.
Viruses are usually associated with illness. Whilst we have known for decades that gut bacteria in young children are vital to protect them from chronic diseases later on in life, before this study, our knowledge about the many viruses there was minimal. The viruses discovered, like bacteria, probably play an important role in protecting children from chronic disease.
