Poor or unbalanced diet is the cause of 56 percent diseases in India: Rajiv Gauba!

Urging health professionals to play an active role, he called for greater access to low-cost generic medicines and greater use of digital health tools, telemedicine, data analytics and AI to extend expert care to underserved communities and give a voice to those deprived of quality medical services.

Discussing the growing field of probiotics, Gauba said that microbiome science has moved beyond descriptive studies to mechanism and applied research. He highlighted emerging areas such as next-generation microbiome-based therapies, synthetic biology and creation of CRISPR-enabled probiotic strains with targeted anti-inflammatory and metabolic functions to provide precision medicine.

However, they cautioned against the increasing prevalence of misinformation and misleading advertising in the probiotics and supplements market and urged physicians and researchers to use their credibility and media reach to disseminate accurate information, promote healthy dietary habits, and support preventive lifestyles, thereby reducing the need for expensive diagnostics and procedures.

Gauba said the country is uniquely positioned to lead the global probiotic movement by combining traditional knowledge with genomic and microbiome research to develop clinically proven probiotics.