Motor neurone disease researchers find link to microbes in gut

Study could eventually lead to new treatments for neurodegenerative condition

Scientists have found tantalising clues that the devastating condition motor neurone disease may be linked to changes in microbes that live in the gut.

Studies in mice revealed that animals bred to develop amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a form of the disease that affected the cosmologist Stephen Hawking, improved and lived longer when they were given an organism called Akkermansia muciniphila.