Bacterial News and Research

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Discovery opens door to preventing diet-induced heart disease

Four years ago, Stanley Hazen, MD, PhD, Chair of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, and colleagues made a landmark discovery linking intestinal bacteria to heart disease. His team found that when our digestive systems digest the nutrients carnitine and choline (abundant in red meat and eggs, respectively), a bacterial waste product called TMAO is formed. They showed that high levels of TMAO are associated with higher rates of heart attack, stroke and cardiac death.

14 Feb 2016

Distinctive gene 'signature' may lead to new way to diagnose Lyme disease

Researchers at UC San Francisco and Johns Hopkins may have found a new way to diagnose Lyme disease, based on a distinctive gene "signature" they discovered in white blood cells of patients infected with the tick-borne bacteria.

12 Feb 2016

Transition from milk-based diet to family food impacts Infants’ gut bacteria

It is the transition to eating the family's food and not the weight of the mother that has the greatest impact on the composition of gut bacteria in nine-month-old children.

12 Feb 2016

International partnership to strengthen evolution research and education

Two of the world's leading centres for evolutionary science will join forces to strengthen evolution research and education, through a new partnership deal announced today, Friday 12 February, for International Darwin Day.

12 Feb 2016

Alcohol appears to impair the body's ability to keep gut bacteria in check

Alcohol itself can directly damage liver cells. Now researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report evidence that alcohol is also harmful to the liver for a second reason — it allows gut bacteria to migrate to the liver, promoting alcohol-induced liver disease.

11 Feb 2016

Vinegar could help fight ulcerative colitis

Vinegar is the perfect ingredient for making tangy sauces and dressings. Now, researchers report in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry that the popular liquid could also help fight ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease that research suggests is related to the gut microbiome.

11 Feb 2016

New technique could help detect harmful PAMP molecules in certain processed foods

Our favourite foods could be made healthier thanks to a new technique developed by the University of Leicester which has identified harmful bacterial molecules in certain processed foods such as burgers and ready meals.

11 Feb 2016

Five researchers named winners of 2016 Elsevier Foundation Awards

Five researchers have been named winners of the 2016 Elsevier Foundation Awards for Early Career Women Scientists in the Developing World, in recognition of research that has strong potential health and economic benefits.

10 Feb 2016

Cranberry capsules more effective in lowering UTI risk than juice

A UTI is an infection in any part of the urinary system, kidneys, bladder or urethra. They are more common in women and affect more than 3 million Americans per year. Many in the population will turn to sipping on a cranberry juice cocktail to alleviate their symptoms, but, according to a Texas A&M Health Science Center urologist, drinking cranberry juice to treat a UTI is little more than an old wives' tale.

10 Feb 2016

Oral therapeutic drug shows promise against recurrent C. difficile infection

Results from a Phase 1b/2 trial suggest that an investigational microbiome-based, oral therapeutic drug is effective for the treatment of recurrent C. difficile infection. In a paper published online in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, a multi-institutional research team reports that treatment with the preparation, containing the spores of approximately 50 species of beneficial bacteria, successfully prevented recurrence of C. difficile infection (CDI) in patients with a history of multiple recurrent disease.

10 Feb 2016

Researchers find new mutation signature in cancer cells

Mutations are the replacement of DNA bases known as Adenine (A), Cytosine (C), Guanine (G) and Thymine (T) with other bases. When mutations such as C to T or G to A are found within a specific DNA sequence, this is known as a mutation signature.

10 Feb 2016

Mayo Clinic researchers discover new bacterial species that triggers Lyme disease in people

Mayo Clinic researchers, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and health officials from Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin, have discovered a new bacterial species that causes Lyme disease in people. The new species has been provisionally named Borrelia mayonii. Prior to this finding, the only species believed to cause Lyme disease in North America was Borrelia burgdorferi.

9 Feb 2016

New method could help physicians detect infection in wounds in less than a minute

A new method for detection of infection in wounds could take physicians less than a minute to complete, rather than the current 24 hours it takes to plate bacteria and leave it to incubate overnight, according to research by the George Washington University's Victoria Shanmugam, M.D.

7 Feb 2016

UIC researchers discover molecular switch that allows salmonella bacteria to fight immune system

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have discovered a molecular regulator that allows salmonella bacteria to switch from actively causing disease to lurking in a chronic but asymptomatic state called a biofilm.

7 Feb 2016

High school wrestlers have highest number of skin infections

The first national survey of skin infections among high school athletes has found that wrestlers have the highest number of infections, with football players coming in a distant second, according to researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

4 Feb 2016

Researchers demonstrate new way to reduce preterm birth using nanoparticles

Using nanoparticles to engineer a special drug, a team of researchers has demonstrated in mice a new way to both reduce preterm birth and avoid the risks of medication in pregnancy to unborn babies.

2 Feb 2016

Mount Sinai researchers report new method to restore microbiome of newborns delivered via C-section

Scientists from the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, collaborating with NYU Langone Medical Center and a multi-center team of researchers, demonstrated for the first time that the microbiome of newborn babies delivered via cesarean section (C-section) can be partially restored to resemble that of vaginally delivered infants.

2 Feb 2016

Researchers show how bacterial colony protects itself against toxic substances

Bacterial populations move over surfaces in coordinated way known as swarming, which allows them to spread further over organs and tissues and increases the virulence of the infection. This movement is driven by the action of the flagella and the chemoreceptors, the systems responsible for identifying chemical compounds in the environment and which are anchored at the poles of their cells, forming highly organised structures, of which the protein CheW forms part.

1 Feb 2016

Immune signaling molecule in infected mothers linked to behavioral abnormalities in offspring

In 2010, a large study in Denmark found that women who suffered an infection severe enough to require hospitalization while pregnant were much more likely to have a child with autism (even though the overall risk of delivering a child with autism remained low).

29 Jan 2016

New breakthrough drug shows promise to fight antibiotic-resistant infections

A New York pharmaceutical company, TGV-Laboratories, has developed a groundbreaking drug that shows promise in treating a wide variety of antibiotic-resistant fungal and bacterial infections.

28 Jan 2016