A research experiment that analyzed the dirty diapers of some babies in Denmark has provided a wealth of information about previously unknown viruses and provides the best picture of the composition of the intestinal microbiome of infants, The Washington Post reported, cited by News.ro.

An international team of researchers announced in an article published in the journal Nature Microbiology that they had discovered 10,000 new viruses in the feces of infants.

The study analyzed the feces of 647 healthy one-year-old Danish children who participated in a long-term study of asthma and chronic inflammatory diseases.

Dirty baby diapers have spawned a surprisingly diverse array of viruses, many of which have yet to be described by science. In total, the researchers discovered 10,000 types of viruses from 248 virus families. And of these families, only 16 were already known.

There were 10 times more viruses in children’s feces than bacteria. Interestingly, 90% of these viruses were bacteriophages, meaning they attacked bacteria, not human cells. These bacteriophages do not cause disease, instead they are thought to shape the competitive abilities of bacteria and balance bacterial populations in the gut microbiome.

The question is why there are so many viruses in children’s intestines. “Our hypothesis is that because the immune system has not yet learned to separate the wheat from the chaff at one year of age, an unusually large number of enteric virus species appear that are likely necessary to protect against chronic diseases such as asthma and diabetes. later in life,” Shiraz Shah, lead author of the study, said in a press release.

The researchers named the newly identified families of viruses after the 232 child participants, so there are now, for example, Amandaviridae, Benjaminviridae and Irisviridae.