News by Subject Medicine & Health

University of Miami researchers have discovered a clue in the humble zebrafish's digestive tract that, one day, could help people on the autism spectrum alleviate one of the most common yet least studied symptoms of their disorder: gastrointestinal distress.

In the right intestines, feces can save lives. This is shown by a new study of feces transplantation and the life-threatening intestinal disease Clostridium difficile. Medical doctors and researchers from Aarhus, Denmark, are presently building up a feces bank, but both the treatment and its non-targeted research could be about to come under pressure.

Signaling through interleukin-10 (IL-10) receptors on gut immune cells plays a critical role in protecting the gut lining and microbiota from disruption caused by whipworms, according to a study published Jan. 31 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by María Duque-Correa of the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the UK, and colleagues.

Research on gut metagenome of patients with Crohn's disease elucidates how it influences the taxonomic and functional composition of intestinal microbiota. Among the most common changes are the decrease in the beneficial microbes diversity and the increased abundance of Escherichia coli and other microbes associated with inflammation. The results can help to better understand the causes and progress of the disease, as well as to optimize treatment schemes. The results were published in BMC Genomics.

MIT engineers have designed an ingestible, Jell-O-like pill that, upon reaching the stomach, quickly swells to the size of a soft, squishy ping-pong ball big enough to stay in the stomach for an extended period of time.

In spite of tremendous advances in treating the chronic inflammatory bowel diseases Morbus Crohn and ulcerative colitis with medication, the chronic inflammation still cannot be kept sufficiently in check for a number of patients. Researchers at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) have now proven that certain cells in the intestines have a key role to play in inducing acute inflammatory episodes. It is hoped that this discovery will lead to innovative approaches to treating the diseases in future.

Sequencing gut microbiomes typically turns up new microbes and other denizens of the intestinal tract, including viruses or phages that prey on these microbes. A new UC Berkeley study has discovered the largest phages every found in humans, with genomes 10 times the average and larger than the genomes of the smallest bacteria. They target bacteria found primarily in people eating non-Western diets. Their large size blurs the line between life and non-life.

A new study published in Gastroenterology highlights the role of a gene-modulator in provoking stomach cancer.

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine found that a diet low in free sugars (those added to foods and beverages and occurring naturally in fruit juices) resulted in significant improvement in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in adolescent boys.