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Health Check: What can we learn from gut sounds?

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2019/03/27 GMT

What can we learn from gut sounds?

BBC World Service - Health Check, What can we learn from gut sounds?

The pioneering Australian doctor who is using tummy noises to try and diagnose IBS

Using recordings of tummy noise to try and diagnose Irritable Bowel Syndrome; How new treatment programmes in Kyrgyzstan are successfully tackling the problem of drug-resistant TB

Doctors in Australia are hoping that by listening carefully and recording the rumbles and other sounds in the gut, it might help them to both diagnose and treat Irritable Bowel Syndrome. The man leading this research is the Nobel-prize winning Barry Marshall, who is Professor of Clinical Microbiology at the University of Western Australia. He famously discovered that stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria, a discovery he made by bravely drinking a soup laced with the bacteria Helicobacter pylori. The idea for listening to gut sounds came about after his engineering colleagues told him about microphones sensitive enough to hear termites making scratching sounds under houses.

Tuberculosis, or TB, is the deadliest infectious disease in the world, killing more than HIV, Ebola and malaria combined; roughly 1.6 million people each year. TB is curable, but treatments can be long and harsh, involving taking large numbers of pills every day for many months. It can be so unpleasant that many people do not finish their treatment. Interrupted and incomplete treatment has led to the rise of drug-resistant forms of TB, which are even harder to treat and have harsher side-effects.  Kyrgyzstan, in Central Asia, is in the top 30 countries with the biggest epidemics of drug-resistant forms of TB, but has now become an early adopter of new drugs and treatment regimens. Hannah McNeish travelled to Kyrgyzstan to see the life-saving and game-changing results.


(Photo caption: Drawing of large intestine on a woman’s body - credit: Getty Images)  


Health Check was presented by Claudia Hammond with comments from BBC Health and Science correspondent, James Gallagher.


Producer: Helena Selby

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