By DONNA RACHEL EDMUNDS Changes in diet can increase the toxicity of a chemotherapeutic drug by up to 100-fold. What we eat has a direct effect on the outcome of medical treatments such as chemotherapy thanks to the interplay between our diets and the microbes in our gut, new research from the University of Virginia...
by Connie Rogers and Darrell Cockburn, The Conversation It’s common for people to focus on their health at the start of the year. But few consider the well being of the microbes that live inside the human gut—the microbiome—which are vital to an individual’s good health. How important are these bacteria? There are as many...
by Emily Caldwell, The Ohio State University Scientists who’ve taken the first look at bacteria in young and healthy vapers’ mouths say that the potential for future disease lies just below the surface. The collection of oral bacteria in daily e-cigaretteusers’ mouths is teeming with potent infection-causing organisms that put vapers at substantial risk for...
UC Riverside engineers are transforming yeast, both the domesticated kind used to make bread and beer and lesser-known wild species, so it can be used in a variety of new ways — including fighting cancer. Yanran Li, a UC Riverside assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering, is working with the yeast species Saccharomyces cerevisiae...
by University of Melbourne This ingredient is an essential component of the malaria parasite, a protein known as RPL6, which makes the parasite “visible” to a type of immune cells, the T cells, in the liver. The researchers added the protein to their existing vaccine strategy, known as ‘prime and trap’, and tested their discovery...
A new study is among the first to trace the molecular connections between genetics, the gut microbiome and memory in a mouse model bred to resemble the diversity of the human population. While tantalizing links between the gut microbiome and brain have previously been found, a team of researchers from two U.S. Department of Energy...
About 1 million people in the United States have ulcerative colitis, a serious disease of the colon that has no cure and whose cause is obscure. Now, a study by Stanford University School of Medicine investigators has tied the condition to a missing microbe. The microbe makes metabolites that help keep the gut healthy. “This...
An algorithm akin to the annoyingly helpful one that attempts to auto-complete text messages and emails is now being harnessed for a better cause. NSF-funded researchers at Drexel University are using its pattern-recognition ability to identify microbial communities in the human body by sifting through volumes of genetic code. Their method could speed the development...
by Washington University School of Medicine Certain human gut microbes with links to health thrive when fed specific types of ingredients in dietary fibers, according to a new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The work—conducted in mice colonized with human gut bacteria and using new technologies for measuring nutrient processing—is a step toward developing...
The married professors were spending their Thanksgiving holiday in Egypt when the husband, Thomas L. Patterson, Ph.D., got very sick very quickly, experiencing fever, nausea and a racing heartbeat. By the time Patterson was accurately diagnosed with a highly multi-drug resistant bacterial infection, he was near death. His wife, Steffanie Strathdee, Ph.D., promised to “leave...
