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Does Gut Health searches on Google help locate Covid 19 hotspots?

Oct

28

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It is commonly experienced by Covid-19 patients to have gastrointestinal issues such as gut irritation or diarrhea.

A September 12 2020 Bloomberg report of Massachusetts General Hospital research found that the public searches on Google correlated strongly with Covid cases in New York, New Jersey, California, Massachusetts and Illinois -- three to four weeks before contracting the disease.

These searches were associated with Covid 19 symptoms related to the gastrointestinal issues, and can serve as an advanced indicator of hotspots before they happen.

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2020-09-13/googling-for-gut-symptoms-predicts-covid-hot-spots-study-finds

A bacteria is found to generate electricity

Oct

24

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Imagine if humans could breathe in air and breathe out electricity. That's not so far from the truth for some bacteria. It is commonly accepted among scientists that two bacteria, Shewanella and Geobacter conduct small amounts of electricity.

Bacteria have no mouth or lungs. The bacteria called Geobacter swallows organic waste and exhale electrons which generates a tiny electric current in the process, according to a September 19 2020 article by Live Science.

Nikhil Malvankar, an assistant professor at Yale University's Microbial Science Institute in Connecticut, told Live Science that Geobacter are 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair, but by breathing through a snorkel they trasmit electrons hundreds to thousands of times the length of their body (1).

An August 20 2020 article by Science magazine says Dr. Lars Peter Nielsen of Aarhus University, Denmark, found bacteria that join cells end to end to build electrical cables able to carry current up to 5 centimeters through mud (2).

Theoretically, this suggests that it might be possible to manipulate bacteria to create enough microbe-generated energy for consumer use, as in a "microbe-battery". TBD.

1. https://www.livescience.com/amp/electron-breathing-geobacter-microbes.html

2. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/electric-mud-teems-new-mysterious-bacteria#:~:text=But%20the%20more%20researchers%20have,moving%20electrons%20over%20shorter%20distances.

Ancient toilets hint of original human gut microbiome

Oct

21

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An October 06 2020 article by the Archaeological Institute of America had an interesting story about toilets from days long past? Microbiome found in the latrines of medieval period Jerusalem and Riga Latvia show similarity to modern hunter gatherer microbiomes and modern industrial microbiomes,” according to Susanna Sabin of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History quoted in the article. However they are slightly different possessing their own unique characteristics.

These findings may help us understand the originating microorganisms of the human gut before the widespread use of antibiotics and processed foods.

https://www.archaeology.org/news/9080-201006-medieval-human-microbiome

Another potential disease prevention tied to gut microbiome and SCFAs

Oct

17

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A September 30 2020 Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News article reported that Keio University School of Medicine's Dr. Hitoshi Tsugawa may have found a new approach to disease prevention. Tsugawa's study of mice demonstrated interaction between an immune cell protein, short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), and gastrointestinal bacteria in our gut. The interaction triggers protection against Salmonella infection.

Some of the gut microbial species inside our gut can break down fiber eaten as part of the diet into short-chain fatty acids, which protect against the potential infections such as Shigella, E. Colin, and Salmonella, the report said. The study also examined how SCFA receptors contribute to the regulation of innate immune responses.

Tsugawa's team found that the SCFAs could bind to a protein called apoptosis-associated speck-like protein (ASC) to, prevent the inflammatory process. ASC is part of an inflammasome complex, which helps to activate the inflammatory response.

https://www.genengnews.com/news/dietary-fiber-gut-microbiome-and-immune-cells-work-together-to-prevent-infection/

Impact of microbiota, heat and aging bones

Oct

14

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On September 11 2020, Medical Express reported that a research team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, observed that bone strength is enhanced by exposure to warmer ambient temperatures (34 °C). They also observed how temperature affects gut bacteria.

When microbiomes need to adapt to heat, it leads to a disruption in the synthesis and degradation of polyamines, molecules that are involved in aging, and in particular in bone health, according to the article.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-09-stronger-bones-microbiota.amp

Changing dynamics of gut microbiome in IBD patients

Oct

10

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Dr. Janst Jansson and colleagues of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory determined the composition of the gut microbiomes in over 100 patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in three month intervals to determine how these microbiomes differ over time.

They found that IBD patients experienced erratic fluctuations in their gut microbiomes when compared to healthy individuals, which offers a valid way to monitor IBD patients. These fluctations appear to be correlated with the level of medications used by the patients.

As studies like these tend to do, it calls for medication- specific studies of positive and/or negative influences of each medication on the human gut microbiome. It may answer questions such as, "how are medications affecting these gut microbiome fluctuations?"

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oS1ZmFFSBtM

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28191884/

Study: gut bacteria to reduce allergies

Oct

7

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A September 14 2020 Genetic Literacy Project reported various findings that point to a potential gut microbiome solution to allergies. Researchers have spent decades on this concept called oral immunotherapy, which has come into use as a treatment for food allergies. Allergies affect an estimated 32 million people in the United States, including about two schoolchildren per classroom.

In March, scientists discovered large amounts of antibodies against peanut allergens in the stomach and gut of allergic patients, according to the Genetic Literacy Project article. Dr. Cathryn Nagler, immunologist at the University of Chicago, discovered the allergic mice lacked the normal communication that takes place between gut microbes and immune cells. Honing in on the specific gut bacteria strains, her team found that Clostridia, but not Bacteroides, prevented food-allergic responses.

Another study led by Rima Rachid and Talal Chatila at Boston Children’s Hospital, found that the single species Subdoligranulum variabile and a set of Clostridia species, including Anaerostipes caccae, prevented allergic responses. In both studies regulatory T cells were key to the response with the microbes triggering the response. Researchers found that by adding healthy microbes to allergic mice showed results in preventing the allergic reactions in those mice.

https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2020/09/14/do-you-have-food-allergies-manipulating-the-gut-microbiome-might-treat-them/

Fungi linked to cognitive impairment can be aided by keto diet

Oct

3

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According to an August 2020 NeuroScience article, scientists say the keto diet has an unique ability to help regulate fungi living with the gut bacteria of patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). The principal investigator of this research Hariom Yadav is assistant professor of molecular medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine, of Wake Forest Baptist Health.

Yadav and his team tested the rRNA TS1 gene in 11 individuals, 6 with MCI issues, to see how the Mediterranean ketogenic diet and American Heart Association diet influences the patients' cognitive functions, specifically "Alzheimer’s markers in cerebrospinal fluid and gut bacteria".

While Dr. Yadav said more research needed to be done to determine more specifics, he said this study shows that there is a connection between the keto diet in reducing harmful fungi in the gut which has been associated with Alzheimer’s symptoms.

https://neurosciencenews.com/alzheimers-gut-fungi-keto-diet-16939/amp/

For further reading on the subject, see https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0300060520925930