Category: NWT_Biology

New medical research indicates a mix of microbes in your gut can either help or hinder weight-loss efforts. “We started with the premise that people have different microbial makeups, and this could influence how well they do with dieting,” says Purna Kashyap, a gastroenterologist at the Mayo Clinic.

Kashyap and her team tracked the progress of individuals who were participants in a weight-loss lifestyle-intervention program. They advised the participants to follow a low-calorie diet as the researchers tracked them closely for three months.

They discovered that people who lost at least 5 percent of their body weight had different gut bacteria than those who did not lose 5 percent of their body weight. According to their findings, the successful dieters had an increased amount of Phascolarctobacterium.

Another bacteria, Dialister, was associated with an inability to lose weight. Kashyap says there probably are other types of bacteria that influence dieting too.

As it turns out, we can get a large number of calories from microbes. We do not have the right enzymes to digest every bit of certain types of food, but our bacteria can.

These bacteria eat what we cannot, and during the process of eating they produce byproducts that we digest. These byproducts become another source of calories.

The new study concludes that certain bacteria may be more efficient at creating extra calories for the body to digest. And microbes in the gut could hinder or help efforts to lose weight.

A new study examining the effects of fasting in mice reveals that just 24 hours of caloric restriction can boost the regeneration of cells in the gut, reports Peter Dockrill for Science Alert. “Fasting has many effects in the intestine, which include boosting regeneration as well as potential uses in any type of ailment that impinges on the intestine, such as infections or cancers,” explains MIT biologist Omer Yilmaz.

The study showed that fasting turns on a “metabolic switch” in the intestinal stem cells that increases fat burning. Intestinal stem cells typically renew intestinal lining in about five days, but once the metabolic switch is turned on, the process occurs much faster. Yilmaz’s team harvested intestinal stem cells from mice that had fasted for 24 hours, growing them in a culture to amass cells called organoids.

The team found that these cells had double the capacity to regenerate in comparison to mice that hadn’t fasted. “This was something that we saw in both the young mice and the aged mice, and we really wanted to understand the molecular mechanisms driving this,” says Maria Mihaylova, a biomedical researcher who participated in the study. The team discovered that fasting had activated transcription factors called peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor, which turn on genes involved in metabolizing fatty acids.

That activation induced the cells to break down fatty acids while increasing the cell’s ability to regenerate themselves. The researchers then treated the mice with a molecule that reproduced some of the beneficial effects of fasting, possibly opening avenues to replicating this effect in a pill, or other drug treatment.

Biomedical drugs could be an alternative to prescription drugs, according to Health Line. It’s important to know that one of the most significant but perhaps less understood breakthroughs in healthcare in recent years has been the availability of biosimilars.

Biosimilars are drugs that are highly similar to the biologic drugs on which biosimilars are based.  When a biopharmaceutical company’s patent or exclusivity protection for its biologic drug expires in the United States, biosimilars that have actually received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval can then enter the marketplace and compete with that existing drug.

Medical expery say that biosimilars, which have to go go through a thorough and complicated  review by the FDA, provide the very same benefits for patients as the original drug and demonstrate no clinically meaningful difference from the existing biological drug in terms of safety, potency or purity of content.

In an long and thorough review of science literature evaluating patients who switched from regular prescription medicines to biosimilars, Hillel Cohen, executive director of scientific affairs at Sandoz Biopharmaceuticals (a Novartis company), and her fellow researchers looked at 90 biosimilar studies that enrolled 14,225 patients.

Thelie results showed that safety concerns and efficacy were not changed after patients made the switch.

“Biosimilars offer affordable options that increase access with no compromise in safety, efficacy, or quality,” Gillian Woollett, MA, DPhil, a senior vice president at Avalere Health and research scientist in immunology who’s worked for many years in the biotech industry says. These drugs however are not mentioned by doctors and aren’t promoted. That probably should change.

Researchers from New York University found that heavy drinking may fill a person’s mouth with harmful bacteria, according to a new study published in the journal Microbiome.

In the study, scientists analyzed spit samples from more than 1,000 healthy volunteers between the ages of 55 and 84. Beyond that, they also asked the participants about their regular eating habits, including how much alcohol they consumed.

The team  then used a form of RNA sequencing to analyze the microbiome in each volunteer’s mouth. They found a strong link between drinking alcohol and a higher abundance of bacteria that often leads to gum disease. They also found drinking is correlated with lower amounts of Lactobacillales, which generate good oral health.

Regular drinkers also had higher levels of bacteria from the genus Neisseria, some of which can produce the carcinogen acetaldehyde. While no study has linked the organisms to cancer, it is another concern.

“Such changes potentially contribute to alcohol-related diseases, including periodontal disease, head and neck cancer, and digestive tract cancers, but further research is needed to relate alcohol-related composition changes to disease phenotypes,” wrote the team in their research, according to Gizmodo.

Researchers believe there is a chance alcohol could alter the mouth biome by killing off key immune cells, damaging teeth, or significantly altering the composition of saliva. However, nobody knows to what degree these microbial changes are the result of drinking alone. 

Even so, this is the largest study to look at the way alcohol affects the human mouth microbiome. Such research could give insight into how alcohol increases the risk of certain mouth diseases and expand general knowledge of human health.

“We know that alcohol is a risk factor for many other diseases,” said study co-author Jiyoung Ahn, an epidemiologist at the New York University School of Medicine, according to TIME. “This is another scientific rationale, or justification, that heavy drinking is not recommended. We should avoid heavy drinking in terms of maintaining a healthy microbiome.”

Scientists from Tufts University are in development on a smart bandage that can keep track of a wound and dispense medicine to the injured area when necessary, according to a new study published in the journal Small.

The new technology does everything related to proper wound treatment. Not only does it monitor both the pH and temperature of the gash, it also has the ability to diagnose and dispense drugs if a problem occurs. That administration comes from a central processor, which a doctor can program to administer treatment if specific conditions are met.

“A stimuli‐responsive drug releasing system comprising of a hydrogel loaded with thermo‐responsive drug carriers and an electronically controlled flexible heater is also integrated into the wound dressing to release the drugs on‐demand,” wrote the team in their paper, according to Engadget.

The new bandage can also monitor treatment to see if further steps are needed once the drugs are given out. It can provide real-time status updates through Bluetooth as well.

Currently, chronic wounds are one of the leading causes of amputation around the world. A flexible and readily available bandage that can deliver real-time treatment could be instrumental in cutting back on those numbers by reducing infection and promoting healing.

While this is not the first time researchers have attempted to incorporate technology into a bandage, it is more promising than other attempts because the bandage itself can administer treatment. That has not been done before and it could help separate this model from the pack.

“What we have demonstrated is a flexible smart bandage that has your drug cocktail in it,” study co-author Sameer Sonkusale, a professor at Tufts University, told Digital Trends. “It senses how the wound is healing and delivers the drug in real time in appropriate quantity to make it heal faster.”

While there is still a long way to go before the device is ready for real world application, there is no doubt potential. The team next plans to test the technology on chronic wounds in animals to see if it is as effective as early testing suggested.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have come one step closer to creating a universal blood test for cancer, according to a new report in the journal Science. 

The team developed a new method that, when trialed, detected eight common forms of the deadly disease. Their version is an annual test that is designed to catch cancer as early as possible.

Tumors release small traces of mutated DNA and proteins into the bloodstream. The new test — known as Cancer Seek — looks for such mutations across 16 genes that typically arise during cancer, as well as in eight proteins that are commonly released with the disease.

Researchers used the method on 1,005 patients with ovary, liver, stomach, pancreas, esophagus, colon, lung, or breast cancer that had not yet spread to other tissues. It found roughly 70 percent of all the diseases.

“This field of early detection is critical, and the results are very exciting,” study co-author Cristian Tomasetti, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told BBC News. “I think this can have an enormous impact on cancer mortality.”

Early detection is critical because the earlier the disease is found, the greater the chance of being able to properly treat it. Five of eight cancers detected in the study currently have no way to screen for early detection. For instance, pancreatic cancer has so few symptoms that four in five patients with the disease die the year they are diagnosed.

Now that Cancer Seek has proven successful in early testing, the team next plans to try it on people who have not been diagnosed with cancer. If it still works with high accuracy, it could be given the green light for widespread usage.

Scientists eventually hope to use the process as a blood test that is taken once a year. If the number of mutations and proteins being analyzed were to increase, it could also help the system detect even more types of cancer.

“This has the potential to substantially impact patients,” said study co-author Ann Marie Lennon, an associate professor of medicine, surgery and radiology, clinical director of gastroenterology and director of the Multidisciplinary Pancreatic Cyst Program, in a statement. “Earlier detection provides many ways to improve outcomes for patients. Optimally, cancers would be detected early enough that they could be cured by surgery alone, but even cancers that are not curable by surgery alone will respond better to systemic therapies when there is less advanced disease.”