I’ve been interested in this field since before the term “microbiome” was coined. In the 1990s, I conducted research at Leiden University Medical Center on the role of microorganisms in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). We were the first to take biopsies from the target tissues of inflamed joints of patients with RA and other forms of inflammatory joint disease, and analyze them using 16s PCR. We detected microbial DNA in different forms of arthritis and predicted that it would be derived from the gut.
