Research led by the Chinese University of Hong Kong shows that changes in the gut microbiome occur before the development of eczema in young children. As reported in the journal mSystems, the researchers noted that the genera Clostridium sensu stricto 1 and Finegoldia were present in higher amounts before eczema…

A study led by the University of British Columbia in Vancouver shows children with four common allergic conditions in infancy share similar signs of gut microbiome abnormalities at one year. The research team believes their findings could help predict who will develop allergies and could even help develop more effective…

The gut microbiome long has been linked to health as well as the incidence and mortality of a range of diseases. It is also one of the systems in the body most able to be influenced by environmental and social exposures. Now, a multisite research effort from investigators at Washington…

Research conducted by the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine, has revealed that the gut microbiome can have a significant impact on the acquisition of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV) infections as well as on the course of the disease. Reporting in Nature Biotechnology, scientists…

Three therapeutic regulatory approvals in less than a year signal that the promise of the human microbiome may finally be paying off. All of the approved therapies focus on treating recurrent Clostridium difficile infection, but what is next for the field? With promising oncology-related trial results from a number of…

A U.K. and Swiss study suggests that our immune system does not simply shape our microbiome, but that our microbiome also shapes our immune system. The research in fruit flies, published in Science, supports the idea that specific host immune genes have been tailored or selected for to deal with…

Swedish researchers have discovered a link between the levels of certain bacteria in the gut, especially species of Streptococcus, and coronary atherosclerotic plaques. Formed by the build-up of fatty and cholesterol deposits, such plaques are a major cause of heart attacks. The new study was based on analyses of the…

Specific gut microbes have been linked to autism-associated metabolic pathways, including gene expression profiles in the brain and diet. “We hadn’t seen this kind of clear overlap between gut microbial and human metabolic pathways in autism before,” says Jamie Morton, of the Simons Foundation, and one of the study’s 43…

The human gut microbiome has been sorted into five “enterosignatures.” These are dominated by Bacteroides, Firmicutes, Prevotella, Bifidobacterium, or Escherichia. This new model confirms previous enterotype concepts, which sorted the hundreds of bacteria in the gut microbiome into just three buckets. But this new model could help with patient care. This team used about 5,230 gut metagenomes  from…

A new study from South Korea demonstrates how the gut microbiome can affect risk of hypertension. The team compared four major types of gut bacteria and found that Bacteroides2 had the strongest association with hypertension. The work was done by a research team at Kangbuk Samsung Hospital in collaboration with…

Researchers at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center have shown that the microbiome within tumors from patients with early-onset colorectal cancer (CRC) differs significantly from that of patients with late-onset disease. The findings, which will be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2023 annual meeting in Chicago in…

U.S. research has shown that the susceptibility of the gut pathogen Clostridioides difficile to antibiotics is affected by other bacteria, suggesting that the entire microbiome should be considered when designing eradication treatments. The presence of other microbes that were more susceptible to low antibiotic concentrations led to increasing numbers of C.…

The balance of microbes in the human gut varies substantially from morning to night and even more by season, researchers at University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have found. Fluctuations, they say, completely transform the microbiome from summer to winter. This could affect research studies. The timing of stool sample…

New microbiome-based evidence suggests a two-drug combination, a blockade of both IL-22 and IL-1R, may treat inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. This team studied “upstream cues” of microbial interactions with intestinal cells. They report that IL-22 and IL-1R can trigger “a chain reaction” that…

A “local” artificial intelligence framework provides more personalized information about how the microbiome influences risk of colorectal cancer, according to a research team from the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Their work separates patients into four distinct subgroups. “Local explanation techniques make it possible to discover the most contributing bacteria for…