A particular problem concerns older adults in long-term-care facilities. The gut microbiome of such individuals shows substantially less diversity than that of older adults who continue to live in the cities, towns, and farms they always lived in. Interacting with a large and diverse number of people (and farm animals) maintains a diverse microbiome. The extremely antiseptic nature of long-term-care facilities, and the restricted pool of inhabitants (mostly older humans), may impoverish the microbiome and reduce its diversity. In a few studies so far, the loss of diverse community-associated
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