Irritable Bowel Blog

More Miles, More Gut Trouble?

2025-09-13T16:02:00.000-07:00

If you’ve ever trained for a marathon or ultramarathon and found yourself sprinting for the porta-potty afterward, you’re not alone. GI drama is a well-known companion of long-distance events. And now, a new study is raising eyebrows (and some colonoscopes) about whether extreme mileage might actually increase the risk of precancerous colon polyps.

At the 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting, oncologist Dr. Tim Cannon and colleagues at Inova Schar Cancer presented a small but striking study: among 100 elite runners - each with at least five marathons or two ultramarathons under their belts - 15% had advanced adenomas (precancerous growths) and 41% had at least one adenoma. That’s far higher than the ~1-2% rate typically seen in healthy adults of similar age.

The researchers suspect a link between exercise-induced gut stress - aka runner’s colitis - and these findings. Repeated blood shunting away from the intestines during endurance events may cause ischemia (temporary oxygen loss) and micro-injury to the colon. Over years of high-volume training, those tiny hits might add up.

This isn’t a new idea. The Science behind the Runner’s Runs is well documented.

Even in healthy young adults, intense exercise in extreme heat (even stop-and-go sprints over just 3-4 miles) can trigger ischemic colitis. Studies report exercise-induced gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms in up to 70% of endurance athletes.

So yes, that stomach cramp isn’t just your gel packet revolting; your colon might actually be gasping for air.

Wait, Isn’t Exercise Supposed to Be Good for You? Absolutely. Decades of evidence, including a large randomized trial in NEJM (Courneya et al., 2025), shows exercise improves survival in colon cancer survivors. Moderate, consistent activity is a cornerstone of cancer prevention.

The Inova study doesn’t suggest jogging a few miles a week will hurt you - it’s zeroing in on ultra-endurance lifestyles, where pounding out 40+ miles a week is normal and multiple marathons are a badge of honor. (Because apparently 26.2 miles once wasn’t enough of a flex.)

Exercise remains one of the best things you can do for your health, but like any powerful intervention, more isn’t always better. Science is still catching up on what happens when you treat your body like a mileage sponge. For now, lace up, enjoy your runs, and listen to your gut - literally. After all, nobody brags about a Personal Record in their colonoscopy prep.

REFERENCES and Notes

Timothy Lewis Cannon, Bonomelli S, Swain WR, Kaltman RD, Mani H, Xia M, Randall J, Wang H, Harnden I, Donet JA, Nguyen VA. Risk of pre-cancerous advanced adenomas of the colon in long distance runners.et al. Risk of pre-cancerous advanced adenomas of the colon in long distance runners. JCO 43, 3619-3619(2025). DOI:10.1200/JCO.2025.43.16_suppl.3619

Vujasinovic M, Omae M, Panic N, Fjellgren E, Bloch N, Kikec Z, Grasselli M, Lindberg G, Löhr JM, Baldaque-Silva F. Gastrointestinal bleeding in long-distance runners: a systematic review. Eur J Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2025 Jun 1;37(6):691-701. doi: 10.1097/MEG.0000000000002931. Epub 2025 Apr 29. PMID: 39976001.

Courneya KS, Vardy JL, O'Callaghan CJ, Gill S, Friedenreich CM, Wong RKS, Dhillon HM, Coyle V, Chua NS, Jonker DJ, Beale PJ, Haider K, Tang PA, Bonaventura T, Wong R, Lim HJ, Burge ME, Hubay S, Sanatani M, Campbell KL, Arthuso FZ, Turner J, Meyer RM, Brundage M, O'Brien P, Tu D, Booth CM; CHALLENGE Investigators. Structured Exercise after Adjuvant Chemotherapy for Colon Cancer. N Engl J Med. 2025 Jul 3;393(1):13-25. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2502760. Epub 2025 Jun 1. PMID: 40450658.

Cha S, Kwon BS, Hong N, Park JS, Byun SK, Choi SC, Kim YS. Ischemic Colitis Associated with Rhabdomyolysis and Heat Stroke after an Intense Exercise in Young Adult. Korean J Gastroenterol. 2019 Aug 25;74(2):115-118. doi: 10.4166/kjg.2019.74.2.115. PMID: 31438663.

https://www.inovanewsroom.org/press-release/2025/08/groundbreaking-inova-study-finds-potential-link-between-long-distance-running-and-colon-cancer/

Yu, Candice et al. Exercise-driven modulation of glutamatergic signaling: mechanisms and clinical implications Neuroscience, 2025, Volume 589, 33 - 49.

Summary of the press-release comment thread:

Personal stories & thanks: A marathon trainee (stage III colon cancer with BRAF mutation) and others thank Inova for investigating; several endurance athletes are now reconsidering training or seeking screening.
Scope beyond running: Ultracyclists and triathletes ask whether the signal is from running mechanics (impact/ischemia) or endurance-sport commonalities (high-sugar fueling, fiber restriction, long efforts).
Methodology concerns: Readers question the cited “expected 1–2%” baseline for advanced adenomas (ask for contemporaneous controls), call out small sample, no control group, and urge comparisons with fit and average peers.
Timing/context questions: One commenter wonders why this is being detected now (post-COVID era) and suggests caution in public messaging to avoid undue alarm while encouraging screening for ultra-athletes.
Media amplification: Several aggregator articles echo the press release; one commenter links to potentially conflicting evidence in NEJM (no details discussed in-thread).
Net sentiment: Interest and cautious concern, with strong support for earlier evaluation of symptomatic runners and for larger, controlled follow-up studies before drawing causal conclusions.

https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1nf8uod/study_finds_potential_link_between_longdistance/

Summary of the r/science comment thread:

Headline numbers (from the press release/study summary): commenters highlight that 15% of the 100 endurance runners (ages ~35–50) had advanced adenomas and 41% had any adenoma; average age 42.5 (younger than routine screening). Many find this “shocking.”

Who counted as “long-distance”: people who’d done ≥5 marathons or ≥2 ultramarathons—i.e., very high-volume runners, not casual 5–10K folks.

Big caveats (most-upvoted critiques): tiny, single-center cohort; no control group; wide CIs (e.g., the 15% could be ~8–23%); likely selection/volunteer bias (e.g., ~30% reported blood in stool; among those with advanced adenomas, ~53% reported post-run bleeding). Several users note it appears to be an abstract/press release rather than a fully peer-reviewed paper yet.

Anecdotes abound: multiple stories of very fit runners (some in their 30s–40s) diagnosed with colon cancer; others say such cases are still uncommon in clinical practice.

Hypothesized mechanisms:

Ischemia/blood-flow shunting during prolonged exertion (exercise-induced ischemic colitis), repeated micro-bleeds/micro-tears, and mechanical jostling/impact of the colon.
Sympathetic surge (adrenaline/noradrenaline) diverting blood from the gut.
Diet/exposures common to endurance sports: high sugar/gel use, artificial colors/sucralose, processed supplements, heavy traffic pollution/particulates, microplastics, asphalt dust.
Genetic predisposition/selection for people who excel at endurance.

Comparisons/questions: Could similar patterns exist in cyclists (prostate issues from prolonged pressure) or other endurance athletes? What about walking (most think benefits remain).

Evolution debates: back-and-forth on whether humans “evolved to run long distances” (persistence hunting) vs. arguments that extreme marathon/ultra training is not ancestral nor necessarily healthy.

Practical notes repeated by clinicians/runners: rectal bleeding is not normal; screen at 45 (earlier if symptoms or risk factors). Don’t over-interpret a small, preliminary study; larger controlled studies are needed before drawing causal conclusions.
Evolution debates: back-and-forth on whether humans “evolved to run long distances” (persistence hunting) vs. arguments that extreme marathon/ultra training is not ancestral nor necessarily healthy.

Practical notes repeated by clinicians/runners: rectal bleeding is not normal; screen at 45 (earlier if symptoms or risk factors). Don’t over-interpret a small, preliminary study; larger controlled studies are needed before drawing causal conclusions.

In fitness or sports, PR stands for personal record, PB (more commonly used in Canada) is personal best. Runners are using the terms PR and PB somewhat interchangeably.

From Step Counters to Gut Health Co-Pilots

2025-09-04T18:00:00.000-07:00

Many of us wear tiny research labs on our wrists, fingers, and even shoes. These devices quietly track our steps, heartbeats, and sleep cycles. But the future of wearables isn’t just counting steps, it’s building personalized health co-pilots: adaptive, AI-powered systems that understand your unique rhythms and predict problems before they happen. For people with chronic gastrointestinal (GI) conditions like IBS, this shift could be transformative.

Recognizing this potential, the Health Secretary recently unveiled a nationwide initiative to promote wearable adoption. Announced on June 24 as part of the ambitious “Making America Healthy Again” agenda, the campaign aims to encourage every American to integrate these technologies into their daily lives.

A recent review highlights how wearable devices, from smartwatches to sensor patches, are already being used to monitor IBD activity, predict flares, and track biomarkers like fecal calprotectin and C-reactive protein. Future applications may include ingestible sensors, microbiome monitoring, and machine learning-driven early disease detection. Similarly, advances in acoustic sensing are turning bowel sounds into a diagnostic tool for IBS. Miniaturized microphones, AI models like convolutional and recurrent neural networks, and portable recording devices are bringing continuous, objective GI monitoring closer to reality.

But there’s a deeper layer emerging beneath these devices: Network Medicine (NM). NM maps disease as disruptions in interconnected molecular and physiological networks rather than single gene or biomarker abnormalities. By treating diseases like IBS as network-wide phenomena, NM provides a framework for understanding how gut inflammation links to immune responses, microbiome shifts, and even stress hormones. When combined with AI, especially deep learning, NM allows researchers to integrate massive multi-omic datasets (genomics, proteomics, metabolomics) with wearable device streams, revealing subtle, individualized signatures of disease progression or recovery. This fusion moves beyond simple symptom tracking, creating biologically grounded, predictive health models.

Similarly, NM’s predictive networks must adapt dynamically to individual variability. Researchers are working on cross-user adaptive AI and network-aware modeling that runs efficiently on-device, preserving privacy while continuously refining predictions. Recent systematic reviews of large language models in healthcare - echoing earlier analyses of AI’s underutilization in biomedicine - underscore this theme: despite rapid advances, there are persistent gaps between benchmark performance and real-world usability, emphasizing the need for dynamic, evaluator-aware frameworks to guide safe clinical adoption.

Imagine a wearable ecosystem that does more than log symptoms - it connects the dots through network science: a smartwatch detecting subtle heart rate variability, a ring tracking skin temperature trends, and an ingestible sensor analyzing gut pH. Integrated with NM-driven AI, these signals could identify emerging disease network perturbations and predict a flare-up 48 hours in advance, guiding personalized diet tweaks, medication adjustments, or stress management before symptoms strike. Bowel sound analysis, combined with unobtrusive “toilet-lab” technology could replace tedious food diaries with objective, automated insights, creating a continuous and rich feedback loop between the body and the wearer.

The leap from step counters to gut health co-pilots isn’t just a technical upgrade; it’s a paradigm shift -from reactive care to proactive, precision health. By merging wearable technology with AI and NM, supported by seamless in-home lab testing, we’re approaching a future where chronic GI condition management is informed by both real-time physiological data and deep network-level understanding of disease. With careful design, strong privacy safeguards, and adaptive AI, wearable tech could evolve into indispensable tools that don’t just monitor illness but actively shape health outcomes.

REFERENCES

Nicholas GO, Faith LI, Jeric MC, KO O, Kelvin KF, Seung-Min PA, Christopher HT, Sunny HW. Acoustic sensing and analysis of bowel sounds in irritable bowel syndrome-recent engineering developments and clinical applications. Sensors and Actuators A: Physical. 2025 Jul 22:116910.

Harindranath S, Desai D. Wearable technology in inflammatory bowel disease: current state and future direction. Expert Review of Medical Devices. 2025 Feb 1;22(2):121-6.

Irene S. Gabashvili Evaluating General-Purpose LLMs for Patient-Facing Use: Dermatology-Centered Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis medRxiv 2025.08.11.25333149; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.08.11.25333149

Erturk E, Kamran F, Abbaspourazad S, Jewell S, Sharma H, Li Y, Williamson S, Foti NJ, Futoma J. Beyond Sensor Data: Foundation Models of Behavioral Data from Wearables Improve Health Predictions. arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.00191. 2025 Jun 30. https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.00191

Cai Y, Guo B, Salim F, Hong Z. Towards Generalizable Human Activity Recognition: A Survey. arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.12213. 2025 Aug 17. https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.12213

Harvard dropouts to launch 'always on' AI smart glasses that listen and record every. TechCrunch Aug 20, 2025 conversation. https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/20/harvard-dropouts-to-launch-always-on-ai-smart-glasses-that-listen-and-record-every-conversation/

Predicting Meal Responses: A Storm of Variables

2025-05-12T08:43:00.000-07:00

Predicting how our bodies respond to meals—particularly for individuals with conditions like Irritable Bowel Syndrome - is notoriously challenging. Traditional approaches have relied heavily on averages and generalized dietary guidelines, but each individual's unique genetic makeup, gut microbiome, and lifestyle make standardized predictions unreliable. Aurametrix 1.0 was pioneering software designed to personalize predictions based on individual characteristics, acknowledging that our biology makes us distinct. Yet, as recent studies highlight, even this level of personalization might fall short.

A recent exploratory analysis published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition underscores the complexity of individual responses to identical meals. Researchers found substantial variability in glucose responses when the same meal was consumed by the same individual on different days. Using continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), the study tracked glucose responses in participants consuming identical meals one week apart under tightly controlled conditions. Remarkably, about 80% of the variation in glucose responses was attributed to intraindividual factors—biological differences, environmental conditions, and even measurement error—rather than the food itself.

This variability wasn't significantly explained by common factors such as carbohydrate content, energy intake, or physical activity alone. The timing of snack intake, water consumption, recent stress levels, sleep quality, and minor changes in meal composition or eating sequence also influence bodily responses significantly. Similar complexities occur in predicting symptom flares in IBS, where digestive responses can vary dramatically based on recent dietary patterns, hydration, psychological stress, and sleep history.

Behavioral and psychological factors, like stress or anxiety, can profoundly impact digestive function and gut sensitivity, causing variability in how someone with IBS responds even to familiar meals. Likewise, hydration status and recent dietary history can modulate the gut's reaction, making precise predictions difficult. Interestingly, while intraindividual variation (iiV) presents a challenge in the general population, individuals with metabolic disease—particularly those with type 1 or type 2 diabetes—tend to exhibit more predictable glycemic responses to meals - particularly when food categories—rather than just macronutrients—are properly structured through more sophisticated algorithms like Hierarchical Information Criterion (as suggested in Aurametrix 1.0 and demonstrated by Shen et al, 2025)

Emerging research further underscores that a person's response to a meal isn't static but rather dynamic, influenced by a complex interplay of factors over days and weeks, not just hours. These findings suggest that true personalized nutrition must account not only for an individual’s static biological markers but also dynamic behavioral and environmental factors, including past dietary habits, hydration levels, stress, sleep patterns, and even subtle daily activity variations.

Thus, while personalized prediction software like Aurametrix's version 1.0 represented a significant leap forward, the next generation of personalized nutrition and IBS management tools must integrate broader and more comprehensive real-time data. Only then can we better anticipate and manage complex, highly individualized bodily responses.

REFERENCES

Hengist A, Ong JA, McNeel K, Guo J, Hall KD. Imprecision nutrition? Intraindividual variability of glucose responses to duplicate presented meals in adults without diabetes. Am J Clin Nutr. 2025 Jan;121(1):74-82. doi: 10.1016/j.ajcnut.2024.10.007. Epub 2024 Dec 2. PMID: 39755436; PMCID: PMC11747189.

Wolever TM. Personalized nutrition by prediction of glycemic responses: garbage in → garbage out. Am J Clin Nutr. 2025 Jan;121(1):1-2. doi: 10.1016/j.ajcnut.2024.11.004. Epub 2024 Dec 2. PMID: 39755431.

Shen Y, Choi E, Kleinberg S. Predicting Postprandial Glycemic Responses With Limited Data in Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes. J Diabetes Sci Technol. 2025 Mar 5:19322968251321508. doi: 10.1177/19322968251321508. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 40042044; PMCID: PMC11883769.

A New Way to Track Dietary Intake?

2025-03-06T18:24:00.000-08:00

Diet influences almost every aspect of our health—from digestion and mood to energy levels and chronic disease risk. Yet accurately tracking what we eat has always been tricky. Self-report methods, like food diaries and questionnaires, often fall short: Who remembers exactly what they ate two days ago? Was it one glass of orange juice or two?

But what if the answer to tracking your diet - and, by extension, better managing Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) - was as simple as a smart toilet analyzing your stool?

In a new study published in Nature Metabolism, researchers from the Institute for Systems Biology introduce Metagenomic Estimation of Dietary Intake (MEDI) — a novel approach to dietary analysis that relies on the genetic material found directly in human stool. By analyzing food-derived DNA present in fecal samples, MEDI precisely identifies and quantifies dietary components without the inaccuracies of self-reporting. Rather than relying on memory or written logs, MEDI tracks dietary intake by detecting and measuring tiny fragments of food-derived DNA in stool samples.

The research team first created a vast database containing genetic fingerprints of over 400 edible plants and animals. They then developed a specialized algorithm capable of spotting traces of this DNA within the complex mixture of human and microbial genetic material found in stool samples.

Although food DNA makes up only about 0.001% of the total DNA in stool, MEDI accurately identifies these dietary traces. In controlled feeding studies, MEDI’s accuracy rivaled detailed daily food diaries, correctly estimating calorie, protein, carbohydrate, potassium, cholesterol, and vitamin B12 intake.

This precision can offer invaluable insights to IBS sufferers, who often struggle to pinpoint specific dietary triggers behind their symptoms.

MEDI accurately identified when babies transitioned from milk to solid food, beginning around 160 days of age. MEDI’s dietary estimates closely matched results from traditional food frequency questionnaires, validating its real-world effectiveness. MEDI even identified specific dietary patterns linked to metabolic syndrome—highlighting higher animal-food intake and lower plant-based consumption, along with increased lactose, cholesterol, and certain fats. These findings reinforce well-known dietary patterns linked to inflammation and chronic gastrointestinal discomfort, common in IBS.

MEDI’s potential to objectively track diet offers hope for IBS patients, potentially revealing personalized dietary interventions without tedious logging. As research evolves, IBS patients should keep a close eye on stool analysis approaches —it just might hold the key to better dietary management and improved quality of life.

Diet is the most important piece of the puzzle in IBS. Recent advances in treatments provide more drug-based solutions. In addition to currently available treatments, such as laxatives, antidiarrheals, analgesics, and antispasmodics, targeting the underlying stress with opioid delta-receptor agonists (DOP agonists) may offer a quicker solution with minimal adverse effects. Animal studies showed these compounds reduced abdominal pain and improved bowel regularity through their influence on the brain’s insular cortex, potentially relieving both physical and emotional symptoms. Other promising solutions are psychotherapy, including cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and psychodynamic therapy, Ibodulant, targeting gut neurokinin receptors, significantly reducing abdominal pain and diarrhea symptoms in early studies; GaRP (Gastrointestinal Reprogramming) aiming to reset gut functions, and Blautix, a live probiotic therapy designed to restore gut microbiome balance.

REFERENCES

Diener C, Holscher HD, Filek K, Corbin KD, Moissl-Eichinger C, Gibbons SM. Metagenomic estimation of dietary intake from human stool. Nat Metab. 2025 Feb 18. doi: 10.1038/s42255-025-01220-1. Online ahead of print. PMID: 39966520 (preprint: bioRxiv 2024 Feb 6:2024.02.02.578701. doi: 10.1101/2024.02.02.578701.

Yoshioka, T., et al. (2024). Agonists of the opioid δ-receptor improve irritable bowel syndrome-like symptoms via the central nervous system. British Journal of Pharmacology. doi.org/10.1111/bph.17428.

Mozaffari S, Nikfar S, Abdollahi M. Drugs of the future for diarrhea-predominant irritable bowel syndrome: an overview of current investigational drugs. Expert Opinion on Investigational Drugs. 2024 Mar 3;33(3):219-28.

Pitashny M, Kesten I, Shlon D, Hur DB, Bar-Yoseph H. The Future of Microbiome Therapeutics. Drugs. 2025 Jan 23:1-9.

Brian Doctrow, Tracking diet from stool samples. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/tracking-diet-stool-samples

Microbots for IBS

2023-12-10T18:22:00.000-08:00

In managing IBS and other GI conditions, the greatest challenges often lie in accessing and visualizing the problem areas within the complex network of the human body. However, the latest advancements in medical technology are transforming this landscape, bringing what once seemed like science fiction into the realm of reality.

The exploration of the GI system has significantly advanced since the 1970s with the advent of technologies like sonde type and ropeway enteroscopy. A landmark development occurred in 2007 with the introduction of the single-balloon enteroscope (SBE) system, revolutionizing the comprehensive inspection of the small bowel. The advent of a motorized enteroscope further streamlined this process, offering the potential for complete enteroscopy in a single session.

In 2010s, "insideable" devices expanded to include an ingestible pill camera - PillCamSB - to monitor pressure, pH and temperature, gastrointestinal motility, lesions, ulcers, early signs of tumors and bleeding within the small bowel. Proteus sensor could be attached to any pill or food item, enabling it to communicate vital health information from within our bodies. Well Cow bovine health monitor designed to be swallowed by cows measured rumen pH and temperature to prevent health issues and ensure the production of high-quality milk.

The late 20th century witnessed the birth of microbots, a revolutionary product of the microcontroller revolution. These tiny robots, envisioned for medical use in the 1980s, now capitalize on advancements in wireless technology, including Wi-Fi, for improved communication and control. Made from synthetic, biological, or biohybrid materials, microbots are poised to redefine precision in drug delivery and targeted treatments. They could navigate the labyrinth of body's micro-paths, full of barriers that are difficult to break through, break up hard-to-reach clots or deliver drugs to even the most inaccessible tumors.

Microbots, with their capacity for direct drug delivery in the GI tract, promise to reduce systemic toxicity significantly. Xenobots can assemble themselves and motile living biobots or anthrobots can self-construct. Combining these with cutting-edge technologies like CRISPR 2.0 could herald a new era of precision in gene editing.

With a high failure rate of drug candidates in clinical trials, microbots offer a beacon of hope. These micromachines can precisely deliver drugs to disease locations, addressing the challenges of systemic delivery methods. This precision opens possibilities for reevaluating drugs previously set aside due to toxicity, and it stimulates new drug development ventures.

Hydrogel, known for its excellent biocompatibility and adaptable shape, has emerged as a focal point in biomedicine research. Its responsiveness to environmental stimuli (like pH, light, and temperature) has led to the development of "smart" responsive hydrogel micro-nano robots. These are now at the forefront of biomedical applications, including targeted drug delivery, stem cell therapy, and cargo manipulation.

Innovative uses of hydrogel technologies are continually being explored. For instance, recent advances have seen the development of soft and hard hybrid bionic hydrogel robots, adept at tasks like controllable grasping, tumor cell detection, and continuous drug/cell release. Merging these hydrogel robots with medical contrast agents enables their tracking within the body using nuclear magnetic resonance technology.

One of the most groundbreaking applications is the use of smart hydrogel structures for microbiome sampling in the GI tract. These hydrogel microbots, easily swallowable and retrievable, are poised to offer unprecedented insights into the GI microbiome, a critical aspect of IBS research and treatment.

REFERENCES

Nehme F, Goyal H, Perisetti A, Tharian B, Sharma N, Tham TC, Chhabra R. The Evolution of Device-Assisted Enteroscopy: From Sonde Enteroscopy to Motorized Spiral Enteroscopy. Front Med (Lausanne). 2021 Dec 23;8:792668. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2021.792668. PMID: 35004760; PMCID: PMC8733321.

Yoon D, Park S, Park S. Smart hydrogel structure for microbiome sampling in gastrointestinal tract. Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical. 2023 Aug 15;389:133910.

Cao Q, Chen W, Zhong Y, Ma X, Wang B. Biomedical Applications of Deformable Hydrogel Microrobots. Micromachines (Basel). 2023 Sep 24;14(10):1824. doi: 10.3390/mi14101824. PMID: 37893261; PMCID: PMC10609176.

Singeap AM, Sfarti C, Minea H, Chiriac S, Cuciureanu T, Nastasa R, Stanciu C, Trifan A. Small Bowel Capsule Endoscopy and Enteroscopy: A Shoulder-to-Shoulder Race. J Clin Med. 2023 Nov 26;12(23):7328. doi: 10.3390/jcm12237328. PMID: 38068379.

Kriegman S, Blackiston D, Levin M, Bongard J. A scalable pipeline for designing reconfigurable organisms. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020 Jan 28;117(4):1853-1859. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1910837117. Epub 2020 Jan 13. PMID: 31932426; PMCID: PMC6994979.

Gumuskaya G, Srivastava P, Cooper BG, Lesser H, Semegran B, Garnier S, Levin M. Motile Living Biobots Self-Construct from Adult Human Somatic Progenitor Seed Cells. Adv Sci (Weinh). 2023 Nov 30:e2303575. doi: 10.1002/advs.202303575. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 38032125.

The Gut-Brain Connection: A New Horizon in Neurological Health

2023-08-10T13:36:00.046-07:00

The human body is a complex system, and one of its most fascinating connections is the gut-brain axis. This bidirectional communication between the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and the central nervous system (CNS) has recently gained traction in the scientific community, especially concerning acute neurological diseases like stroke, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, and migraine.

The gut-brain axis is not just a physical connection between the gut and the brain; it's a complex network involving proinflammatory cells, gut metabolites, hormones, and neural pathways. Key metabolites include trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) and short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which are believed to play a central role in gut-brain axis dysfunction.

Over 50% of ischemic stroke survivors experience GI complications, with dysphagia, constipation, and GI bleeding being the most common. Diarrhea, constipation, and gastroesophageal reflux are also more frequent in patients with migraine. These complications are not merely side effects but may contribute to poor functional neurologic outcomes. It is postulated that the propagation of proinflammatory cells and gut metabolites (including trimethylamine N-oxide and short-chain fatty acids) from the GI tract to the central nervous system play a central role in gut-brain axis dysfunction. In fact, plasma trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) levels might predict early neurological deterioration (END) in individuals with acute ischemic stroke.

Stroke itself can lead to gut dysbiosis, alterations in the normal host intestinal microbiome. This dysbiosis may further perpetuate neurological impairments, creating a vicious cycle that challenges recovery.

Cognition is one of the most evaluated neurologic subjects linked to the gut microbiome. Cognitive impairment is particularly prevalent in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), a chronic neurological disorder.

Referenced reviews discuss the known GI complications in acute ischemic stroke and multiple sclerosis, emerging therapeutics and lifestyle modifications that target the gut-brain axis.

REFERENCES

Yong HYF, Ganesh A, Camara-Lemarroy C. Gastrointestinal Dysfunction in Stroke. Semin Neurol. 2023 Aug 10. doi: 10.1055/s-0043-1771470. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 37562458.

Ghadiri F, Ebadi Z, Asadollahzadeh E, Moghadasi AN. Gut microbiome in multiple sclerosis-related cognitive impairment. Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders. 2022 Sep 7:104165.

La Rosa G, Lonardo MS, Cacciapuoti N, Muscariello E, Guida B, Faraonio R, Santillo M, Damiano S. Dietary Polyphenols, Microbiome, and Multiple Sclerosis: From Molecular Anti-Inflammatory and Neuroprotective Mechanisms to Clinical Evidence. International Journal of Molecular Sciences. 2023 Apr 14;24(8):7247.

He Q, Wang W, Xiong Y, Tao C, Ma L, Ma J, You C. A causal effects of gut microbiota in the development of migraine. The Journal of Headache and Pain. 2023 Dec;24(1):1-7.

Stealth Care System for IBS

2023-02-06T07:35:00.039-08:00

The term "stealth care" was coined in a political context, referring to the idea of certain words being disguised or hidden and the fact that not all types of caring for someone's wellbeing are within (or approved by) traditional health care.

This term has been also used in the computer security context - to describe the Honeynet Project. A honeynet is a network of Honeypots, computer systems set up to look like regular ones, but with a caveat. Honeypots allow themselves to be attacked by hackers in order to capture their every move, learn the tools, tactics and motives; being used to track down and stop attacks before they happen.

A new paper from McMaster University describes a cellular delivery system that can safely carry potent antibiotics throughout the body to selectively attack and kill bacteria. Physicists at McMaster University are essentially using red blood cells to conceal this antibiotic within turning them into stealth vehicles. The platform could help to address the ongoing antibiotic resistance crisis while avoiding the toxicity and harmful side effects of antibiotics. The technology could be used to fight particularly dangerous and often drug-resistant bacteria such as E. coli, which is responsible for many serious conditions such as pneumonia, gastroenteritis and bloodstream infections.

It could be also used for conditions such as IBS since traditional antibiotics delivery systems can often bring more harm than good in some cases. Antibiotics can disrupt the balance of the microbiome, leading to further symptoms of IBS and potentially causing new health problems. Additionally, overuse of antibiotics can lead to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which can make it more difficult to treat future infections effectively.

REFERENCES

Krivic H, Himbert S, Sun R, Feigis M, Rheinstädter MC. Erythro-PmBs: A Selective Polymyxin B Delivery System Using Antibody-Conjugated Hybrid Erythrocyte Liposomes. ACS Infectious Diseases. 2022 Sep 29;8(10):2059-72.

Săndulescu O, Viziteu I, Streinu-Cercel A, Miron VD, Preoțescu LL, Chirca N, Albu SE, Craiu M, Streinu-Cercel A. Novel Antimicrobials, Drug Delivery Systems and Antivirulence Targets in the Pipeline—From Bench to Bedside. Applied Sciences. 2022 Nov 16;12(22):11615.

Săndulescu O, Streinu-Cercel A, Moțoi MM, Streinu-Cercel A, Preoțescu LL. Syndromic Testing in Infectious Diseases: From Diagnostic Stewardship to Antimicrobial Stewardship. Antibiotics. 2023 Jan;12(1):6.

Stealth-care system: Scientists test 'smart' red blood cells to deliver antibiotics that target specific bacteria (2022, October 31) retrieved 6 February 2023 from https://phys.org/news/2022-10-stealth-care-scientists-smart-red-blood.html

Antibiotics and Bowel Disorders

2023-01-10T11:15:00.002-08:00

Frequent use of antibiotics can increase the risk of developing microbiome-associated diseases in all age groups.

Studies have shown that antibiotic exposure in the prenatal period and during the first 2 years of life can significantly impact the risk of developing atopic and metabolic disorders later in life. The first 6 months of life appeared to be a critical period, as this is when the microbiome is most susceptible to irreversible changes.

Studies of older children (such as 11,000 teens and pre-teens from Finland) have found that, instead of a specific age, the frequency of antibiotic use in the two years prior to the diagnosis of autoimmune disorders, was more strongly associated with risk. Exposures to cephalosporins, macrolides, and amoxicillin-clavulanic acid throughout childhood seemed to increase the likelihood of Juvenile Arthritis (JIA). Exposures to macrolides within two years before diagnosis showed minor association with other autoimmune disorders, including type 1 diabetes (DM), autoimmune thyroiditis (AIT), JIA, and inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD)).

An article recently accepted for publication found that frequent use of antibiotics later in life also increased the risk of IBD. This study of more than 6 million individuals followed for close to 20 years analyzed 87112328 person-years including 36017 new cases of ulcerative colitis (UC) and 16881 new cases of Crohn’s disease (CD) - two primary types of IBD with different characteristics. This risk was predominantly driven by those diagnosed with CD and was strongest within the first few months of antibiotic use. In a nationwide case–control study of individuals 16-years or older in Sweden, similar results were seen for three or more antibiotic dispensations.

The authors of the study hypothesized that antibiotics contribute to the development of IBD by modulating the intestinal microbiome, but more research is needed to fully understand the mechanism behind this association.

REFERENCES

Semeh Bejaoui, Michael Poulsen, The impact of early life antibiotic use on atopic and metabolic disorders: Meta-analyses of recent insights, Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Volume 2020, Issue 1, 2020, Pages 279–289, https://doi.org/10.1093/emph/eoaa039

Räisänen L, Kääriäinen S, Sund R, Engberg E, Viljakainen H, Kolho KL. Antibiotic Exposures and the Likelihood of Developing Pediatric Autoimmune Diseases: a Register-based Matched Case-control Study. (2021). DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-1110501/v1

Faye AS, Allin KH, Iversen AT, et al Antibiotic use as a risk factor for inflammatory bowel disease across the ages: a population-based cohort study Gut Published Online First: 09 January 2023. doi: 10.1136/gutjnl-2022-327845

Post-COVID Irritable Bowel Syndrome

2022-12-24T07:21:00.006-08:00

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common gastrointestinal disorder that affects 9-23% of the global population. While the exact cause of IBS is unknown, it is believed to be a combination of genetic, environmental, and psychological factors. One potential trigger of IBS is infectious illness. Studies have shown that between 3% and 36% of enteric infections can lead to the development of new IBS symptoms, with post-viral IBS being more transient than post-bacterial or post-protozoal IBS. Meta-analysis of published literature found that the incidence of new IBS 12 months after infection was 10.1% (95% confidence interval (CI) 7.2–14.1). The incidence appears higher after parasitic or protozoan infections at 49% compared to 13.8% after bacterial gastroenteritis.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the potential link between infections and IBS, as many patients with COVID-19 have developed gastrointestinal symptoms, including diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal discomfort. In fact, infection of the GI tract is thought to trigger symptoms in approximately 15% of COVID-19 patients. Post-COVID-vaccination gastrointestinal occurrences were reported in 10–20% of cases and the risk of a disease flare in IBS and IBD patients was close to 10%.

Persistent symptoms after SARS-COV-2 infection, known as Post-acute Sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC) or long-COVID, may occur in anywhere from 10-55% of those who have had COVID-19, New study found that the most common new diagnoses caused by Long Covid were tachycardia, followed by Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and IBS.

This chart shows the 0roportion of individuals diagnosed with various conditions by severity of mobility disability. Red are cardiopulmonary diagnoses (AF - atrial fibrillation, Blood Clot, Cardiomyopathy, Pericarditis, PE – pulmonary embolism, POTS – postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, Myocarditis, Tachycardia), light green are gastrointestinal (Irritable Bowel Disease, Irritable Bowel Syndrome), blue-green are neurologic diagnoses (MS – multiple sclerosis, ME – myaligic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, PN – peripheral neuropathy, Stroke), and dark green are metabolic/renal diagnoses (AKD - acute kidney disease, Hyperthyroid, Hypothyroid, Type 1 Diabetes, Type 2 Diabetes). A little over 3% of IBS sufferers do not feel disabled, while over 10% are severely disabled.

There are several risk factors for the development of PI-IBS, including female gender, previous antibiotic treatment, anxiety, depression, somatization, neuroticism, and clinical indicators of intestinal inflammation. A history of Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) may also increase the risk of PI-IBS by up to 25%. Underlying possible mechanisms include ongoing increased permeability, abnormal serotonin metabolism, and ongoing chronic immune activation together with altered microbiota.

REFERENCES

Chan WW, Grover M. The COVID-19 Pandemic and Postinfection Irritable Bowel Syndrome: What Lies Ahead for Gastroenterologists. Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology. 2022 Aug 6.

Gabashvili IS. The Incidence and Effect of Adverse Events Due to COVID-19 Vaccines on Breakthrough Infections: Decentralized Observational Study with Underrepresented Groups. JMIR Formative Research. 2022 Nov 4;6(11):e41914. doi: 10.2196/41914. PMID: 36309347; PMCID: PMC9640199.

Ghoshal UC. Postinfection irritable bowel syndrome. Gut and Liver. 2022 May 5;16(3):331.

Lau B, Wentz E, Ni Z, Yenokyan K, Coggiano C, Mehta SH, Duggal P. Physical and mental health disability associated with long-COVID: Baseline results from a US nationwide cohort. medRxiv. 2022 Dec. 7

Lau B, Wentz E, Ni Z, Yenokyan K, Coggiano C, Mehta SH, Duggal P. Physical and mental health disability associated with long-COVID: Baseline results from a US nationwide cohort. medRxiv. 2022 Jan 1.

Nazarewska A, Lewandowski K, Kaniewska M, Rosołowski M, Marlicz W, Rydzewska G. Irritable bowel syndrome following COVID-19: underestimated consequence of infection with SARS-CoV-2. Polish archives of internal medicine.:16323.

Spiller R, Garsed K. Postinfectious irritable bowel syndrome. Gastroenterology. 2009 May 1;136(6):1979-88.

Thabane M, Marshall JK. Post-infectious irritable bowel syndrome. World journal of gastroenterology: WJG. 2009 Aug 8;15(29):3591.

The Health Benefits of Mung Beans: Antidiabetic, Anti-inflammatory, and More

2022-11-30T12:19:00.097-08:00

Mung beans, also known as green gram or moong, are a type of small, green legume that are native to India and have been cultivated for thousands of years. They are a staple food in many Asian cuisines and are commonly used in traditional medicine, particularly in Ayurveda.

Mung beans are a good source of nutrients, including protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. They are low in calories and fat, making them a healthy choice for people who are trying to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight. Mung beans are also much easier to digest than other legumes such as lentils and hard beans, which include pintos, black beans, and chickpeas. It is worth noting that mung beans are considered to be low FODMAP, meaning that they are generally well tolerated by people with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and other digestive disorders.

One of the key health benefits of mung beans is their ability to cleanse and detoxify the body. Mung beans contain both soluble and insoluble fibers, which help to cleanse the colon and remove toxins from the body. The pasty texture of mung beans is often cited as an indicator of their cleansing properties.

Mung beans have also been shown to have cholesterol-lowering and liver-protective effects, due to the presence of antioxidant compounds such as phenolic compounds. These legumes have been documented to ameliorate hyperglycemia, hyperlipemia, and hypertension, and prevent cancer and melanogenesis, as well as possess hepatoprotective and immunomodulatory activities.

According to the findings of one recent study, the methanolic extract of the seeds from the V. radiata (Mung Bean) plant possesses significant antidiabetic characteristics that are on par with those of the commonly used drug glibenclamide. Hence, V. radiata seems to be effective as a natural antidiabetic.

Mung beans may be helpful for people with digestive disorders. In one study, mung beans were found to improve symptoms such as abdominal pain, bloating, and diarrhea in people with IBS. Mung bean supplementation was shown to prevent the High-Fat-Diet-induced gut microbiota dysbiosis. Mung Bean Seed Extracts (MSE) regulated the composition of gut microbiota by stimulating the growth of the beneficial bacteria Enterococcus, Ruminococcus, Blautia, and Bacteroides and decreasing the growth of the potential pathogenic bacteria Escherichia-Shigella. Similarly, qPCR showed increased numbers of Bifidobacterium, Lactobacillus, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, and Prevotella, compared with people on a regular diet (control group). The anti-inflammatory activity of MSE was observed in LPS-stimulated THP-1 monocytes with the reduction of TNFα, IL-1β, IL-6, and IL-8 genes. mung bean seed coat extract

Finally, mung beans have been traditionally used to improve the overall health of the skin. Some people believe that consuming mung beans can help to purify the blood and reduce unpleasant body odor. It is also believed to help with chloasma - irregular brownish or blackish spots especially on the face.

References:

Lopes LA, Martins MD, Farias LM, Brito AK, Lima GD, Carvalho VB, Pereira CF, Conde Júnior AM, Saldanha T, Arêas JA, Silva KJ. Cholesterol-lowering and liver-protective effects of cooked and germinated mung beans (Vigna radiata L.). Nutrients. 2018 Jun 26;10(7):821.

Amare YE, Dires K, Asfaw T. Antidiabetic Activity of Mung Bean or Vigna radiata (L.) Wilczek Seeds in Alloxan-Induced Diabetic Mice. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine. 2022 Oct 26;2022.

Charoensiddhi S, Chanput WP, Sae-Tan S. Gut Microbiota Modulation, Anti-Diabetic and Anti-Inflammatory Properties of Polyphenol Extract from Mung Bean Seed Coat (Vigna radiata L.). Nutrients. 2022 Jan;14(11):2275.

Hou D, Tang J, Huan M, Liu F, Zhou S, Shen Q. Alteration of fecal microbiome and metabolome by mung bean coat improves diet-induced non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in mice. Food Science and Human Wellness. 2022 Sep 1;11(5):1259-72.

Hou D, Yousaf L, Xue Y, Hu J, Wu J, Hu X, Feng N, Shen Q. Mung bean (Vigna radiata L.): bioactive polyphenols, polysaccharides, peptides, and health benefits. Nutrients. 2019 May 31;11(6):1238.

Kabré WJ, Dah-Nouvlessounon D, Hama F, Kohonou NA, Sina H, Senou M, Baba-Moussa L, Savadogo A. Anti-Inflammatory and Anti-Colon Cancer Activities of Mung Bean Grown in Burkina Faso. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine. 2022 Aug 9;2022.

d’Arc KW, Durand DN, Hama-Ba F, Abiola A, Felix G, Haziz S, Arnaud KN, Pascal T, Maximin S, Aly S, Lamine BM. Mung Bean (Vigna radiata (L.) R. Wilczek) from Burkina Faso Used as Antidiabetic, Antioxidant and Antimicrobial Agent. Plants. 2022 Jan;11(24):3556.

** Bharadwaj, P., & Kaur, H. (2013). Mung bean (Vigna radiata L. Wilczek): A review on its nutritional and functional aspects. Journal of Food Science and Technology, 50(6), 985-995.

** Park, H. K., Kim, J. H., Lee, J. H., & Lee, Y. J. (2016). Cholesterol-lowering and liver-protective effects of mung bean sprouts and their related compounds. Food Science and Biotechnology, 25(1), 125-132.

** de Souza, D. S., & Nascimento, M. G. (2016). Mung beans (Vigna radiata L.) as a functional food: A review. Journal of Functional Foods, 22, 294-303.

Zhang N, Xu P, Wei X, Fan X, Li H. Traditional Chinese Medicine Diet Health and Dermatology. MEDS Public Health and Preventive Medicine. 2022 Feb 16;2(1):11-7.

IG: Special thanks to OpenAI's Assistant for their help with writing this article and suggesting the title. Note that the three double-starred references do not exist. They were generated by AI to look credible. All other references were selected from selected biomedical literature by the human author.

Precision medicine for IBD

2022-04-30T17:50:00.004-07:00

Precision medicine, also known as personalized medicine, is a key clinical goal for the effective treatment of heterogeneous, complex diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), cancer, autoimmune diseases and COVID-19.

Recent paper published in the journal Nature Communications describes a precision medicine approach - the integrated SNP (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) Network Pipeline (iSNP).

The iSNP tool will help to identify subtype of IBD for every patient based on their specific genetics. It could help to describe the individual pathogenesis story and find the best treatment.

Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) develop the condition due to distinct and different mechanisms, determined by their genetics. The causes of IBD aren't understood but are linked to dysfunction of the immune system and how it reacts to food and the gut microbiome, including virome.

For IBD, less than 10% of the identified SNPs are in coding regions of genes and over 90% of SNPs are in areas once thought to just be junk DNA, controlling and regulating the activity of the genes. The immune system functions by taking a wide range of different inputs that trigger different signaling networks within the cell, integrating these to produce a balanced, appropriate response, so a combination of even subtlest SNPs could disequilibrate the system. Understanding how they combine to influence intricately interlinked signals would fill in major gaps enabling personalized treatment.

The iSNP workflow identifies patient clusters with distinct pathomechanisms.

Patient data is layered with population-wide genomics and transcriptomics using. To achieve this, hidden proteins contributing to pathogenesis and key pathogenic pathways are identified and aligned with pathological processes in disease development.

High-quality individual patient genetic information was used along with preprocessed and quality-controlled immunochip data. miRNA-TS identification algorithm MIRANDA was included in the pipeline along with other genetic analysis tools. A computer simulation of interactions, pathways and networks used databases of known and predicted interactions between proteins in the network.

There was not enough granularity in the clinical data to link all pathways with phenotypes and remove confounders such as recurrent corticosteroid therapy. Further work will need to be done on larger cohorts and with multi-omics datasets to confirm the potential for iSNP to be used for precision therapy based on patient-specific genetics.

REFERENCE

Johanne Brooks-Warburton et al, A systems genomics approach to uncover patient-specific pathogenic pathways and proteins in ulcerative colitis, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29998-8

Passive sensors for health monitoring

2022-03-21T11:34:00.003-07:00

Ubiquitous sensing with the use of passive sensors is on the rise - transforming work, healthcare, leisure and everyday life.

We would love to collect data relevant to our health without extra effort on our part. Carriable and wearable sensors require some effort - for example, they have to be periodically charged. They should be small, light and forgettable to be more convenient, but this increases the chance that you can forget or even lose them.

Ten years ago, wearables were predicted to evolve into insideables. The road was longer than expected. The rise and fall of Proteus Digital Health teaches us about the dangers of complexity and excessive costs in remote health. Besides inconveniencing the patients - that had to wear a patch to collect the signals from ingested pills - their technology also required commitment from insurers and doctors and changing the healthcare system's model of funding drugs.

But the ingestible sensors keep evolving. One of the latest proposals is a dissolvable biodegradable sensor that monitors gut bacteria.

Diagnosing and screening for digestive conditions is challenging and time-consuming. And so is monitoring and managing it. Assessment still heavily relies on self-report mechanisms and great opportunities exist for novel, transformational tools - but they should be sufficiently accurate, frequently updated and integrated with rapidly evolving knowledge, detailed, ethical, easy and fun to use (and maintain/calibrate), defending user privacy and developers' intellectual property while providing monetization opportunities.

Some sensors are more successful than others. Pfizer was able to monitor patients’ eczema-related scratching at night by providing them a wearable motion tracker. But there is a luck of fun tools for monitoring digestive disorders. The compliance to IBD-Home, for example, was very low (29%). Still, home monitoring was determined to be feasible and a fully digital Virtual IBD clinic is picking up steam.

REFERENCES

Inami A, Kan T, Onoe H. Ingestible Wireless Capsule Sensor Made from Edible Materials for Gut Bacteria Monitoring. In2022 IEEE 35th International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems Conference (MEMS) 2022 Jan 9 (pp. 110-113). IEEE.

Das SK, Miki AJ, Blanchard CM, Sazonov E, Gilhooly CH, Dey S, Wolk CB, Khoo CS, Hill JO, Shook RP. Perspective: opportunities and challenges of technology tools in dietary and activity assessment: bridging stakeholder viewpoints. Advances in Nutrition. 2022 Jan;13(1):1-5.

Puolanne AM, Kolho KL, Alfthan H, Färkkilä M. Is home monitoring of inflammatory bowel disease feasible? A randomized controlled study. Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology. 2019 Jul 3;54(7):849-54.

Taylor NS. Utilising new technologies and supported self-management to enhance the inflammatory bowel disease patient pathway: pilot, feasibility and development studies (Doctoral dissertation, University of Southampton).

Lipid dysregulation

2022-01-02T17:14:00.004-08:00

Compared to control subjects, patients with IBS show significantly higher lipid levels in their blood. Elevated levels of certain lipids, such as arachidonic acid, in plasma may even serve as putative biological markers in this condition. Lipids have been shown to sensitize mechanoreceptor response and increase perception of gut distention. Some of probiotics beneficial to irritable bowel - such as Lactobacillus or Bifidobacterium - are related to the lipid metabolism displaying lipid-lowering effects.

Dysregulation of lipid metabolism has been a hallmark of many other diseases and conditions including cancer and COVID-19.

Lipids play a crucial role throughout the viral life cycle, and viruses are known to exploit lipid pathways to affect host metabolism. Numerous observational studies have shown potential beneficial effects of lipid-lowering treatment on the course of COVID-19 with significant improved prognosis and reduced mortality. On the other hand, bioactive lipids have been proposed as potential drugs helping to combat COVID-19.

Here is what we know.

Glycerolipids and glycerophospholipids are markers of severe COVID-19, increased in ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome). Lipid storm can be self-destructive enhancing peptide-mediated cytokine storms. Dysregulation of lipid metabolism may be a defining feature of the severity of COVID-19.

Shorter chain lipids were found at increased levels after successful COVID vaccination.

Sphingolipids, especially Sphingomyelin (SM) that associates with cholesterol to form lipid rafts that promote Coronavirus entry on the cellular surface (help viral S-protein to bind the cellular receptor ACE2) are decreased in asymptomatic patients. Other ether lipids [including PC O-35:4 (i), LPC O-18:1 (i) and LPE O-18:2], sphingomyelin (SM34:1; O2), and fatty acids (including FA 18:1 and FA 20:0) are also decreased in asymptomatic COVID.

Lysophospholipids including lysophosphatidylserine (LPS) 18:1, lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) 18:1 and LPA 18:0, lysophosphatidylcholine (LPC) 22:1, and lysophosphatidylinositol (LPI) 18:1 are generally decreased in asymptomatic COVID-19 patients. - Diacylglycerol (DG) 30:0 (14:0_16:0), DG 36:5 (18:2_18:3), phosphatidylcholine (PC) 36:5 (18:2_18:3), and phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) 36:2 (18:0_18:2) are increased. These lipids seem to have a protective effect in COVID-19.

Bioactive lipids - phospholipids including Plasmalogens and PAFs, gamma-linolenic acid (GLA), dihomo-GLA (DGLA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) help cells of the innate immune system - macrophages - with phagocytosis. Targeting membrane sphingolipids and interfering with the virus lipid metabolism could represent a promising path to follow towards the development of COVID-19 treatments.

REFERENCES

Lee SH, Kim KN, Kim KM, Joo NS. Irritable bowel syndrome may be associated with elevated alanine aminotransferase and metabolic syndrome. Yonsei medical journal. 2016 Jan 1;57(1):146-52.

Serra J, Salvioli B, Azpiroz F, Malagelada JR. Lipid-induced intestinal gas retention in irritable bowel syndrome. Gastroenterology. 2002 Sep 1;123(3):700-6.

Schwarz B, Sharma L, Roberts L, Peng X, Bermejo S, Leighton I, Casanovas-Massana A, Minasyan M, Farhadian S, Ko AI, Cruz CS. Cutting edge: Severe SARS-CoV-2 infection in humans is defined by a shift in the serum lipidome, resulting in dysregulation of eicosanoid immune mediators. The Journal of Immunology. 2021 Jan 15;206(2):329-34.

Hao Y, Zhang Z, Feng G, Chen M, Wan Q, Lin J, Wu L, Nie W, Chen S. Distinct lipid metabolic dysregulation in asymptomatic COVID-19. Iscience. 2021 Sep 24;24(9):102974.

Surma S, Banach M, Lewek J. COVID-19 and lipids. The role of lipid disorders and statin use in the prognosis of patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection. Lipids in Health and Disease. 2021 Dec;20(1):1-4.

Casari I, Manfredi M, Metharom P, Falasca M. Dissecting lipid metabolism alterations in SARS-CoV-2. Progress in Lipid Research. 2021 Feb 8:101092.

Demopoulos CA. Is Platelet-Activating Factor (PAF) a missing link for elucidating the mechanism of action of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and explaining the side effects-complications of Covid-19 disease?.

Deng Y, Angelova A. Coronavirus-Induced Host Cubic Membranes and Lipid-Related Antiviral Therapies: A Focus on Bioactive Plasmalogens. Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology. 2021 Mar 12;9:551.

Martín-Fernández M, Aller R, Heredia-Rodríguez M, Gómez-Sánchez E, Martínez-Paz P, Gonzalo-Benito H, Sánchez-de Prada L, Gorgojo Ó, Carnicero-Frutos I, Tamayo E, Tamayo-Velasco Á. Lipid peroxidation as a hallmark of severity in COVID-19 patients. Redox biology. 2021 Dec 1;48:102181.

Das UN. Bioactive lipids-based therapeutic approach to COVID-19 and other similar infections. Archives of Medical Science. 2021.

Microbiome in Complex Disease

2021-12-15T16:33:00.005-08:00

An imbalance between microorganisms in human microbiome is responsible for many complex diseases. The relationship is complex. In a new review article published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, researchers analyzed over 24,000 scientific papers on gut microbiome in metabolic (n=6109 papers), immune (n=7434), autoimmune (n=1927), cardiovascular (n=2605), brain diseases (n=4216) and various cancers (n=5564). Most papers were written about the role of microbiome in obesity (n=5342), while the smallest subset was about heart failure (n=261).

Complex diseases occur due to interaction of genetic and environmental factors.

Gut microbes and their metabolites play important roles as environmental factors. The metabolites - such as short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), the end products of fermentation of dietary fibers by the anaerobic microbes in the gut, can protect us from pathogen invasion by activating immune defense. Lactobacillus rhamnose, for example, strengthens the ability of the T cell response. Lactobacillus sakei reduces the level of serum IgE and IL4. Acinetobacter iwoffii improves respiratory hyperresponsiveness by blocking the recruitment of dendritic cells in the lungs. Lactobacillus casei ATCC334 can produce iron pigment, which plays a role in inhibiting tumor progression. Some microorganisms may be also used in the treatment of hypertension, cardiovascular and other diseases.

Bacterial biofilms (bacterial colonies self-organized in complex structures), on the other hand, can interrupt human immune system in many harmful ways. Bacteroides fragilis biofilms are implicated in destruction of mucosal epithelium, thus promoting migration of harmful species and helping them escape body's defense mechanisms. Small metabolites such as trimethylamine oxide (TMAO) produced by some gut bacteria could induce cardiac hypertrophy and fibrosis.

Some proteases secreted by microbes are contributing to developing diseases, such as arterial sclerosis, skin disease, enteritis and cardiovascular disease and others. M. globosa (a common skin color fungi), on the other hand, secretes proteinase MgSAP1 that rapidly hydrolyses Staphylococcus protein A (SpA) and prevents S. aureus biofilm formation, helping to maintain a healthy skin. Bacteria can also secrete amino acid-derived antibiotics to fight diseases - e.g., Clostridium scindens and C. sordellii that help to inhibit the growth of C. difficile.

The new review discusses these and many other mechanisms in complex disease as well as potential cures and dietary interventions.

REFERENCES

Yu D, Meng X, de Vos WM, Wu H, Fang X, Maiti AK. Implications of Gut Microbiota in Complex Human Diseases. International Journal of Molecular Sciences. 2021, 22(23):12661.

Gamified Eating

2021-12-10T16:52:00.006-08:00

Unhealthy diet is one the most important lifestyle risk factors for metabolic and physiologic changes predisposing to disease. IBS, for example, can be caused by irregular eating, physical inactivity, and quality of sleep, even though IBS subjects usually eat more healthy foods (such as vegetables and legumes) than others. Gamification approaches to nutrition education offer advantages for preventing disease over traditional persuasion methods. Gamiﬁcation might provide not only positive emotional feelings, but it also increases sense of immersion, facilitating learning.

Yet, about half of existing apps don't improve health and wellbeing because they are not developed in a skilled way.

What makes a diet best? What is the best diet for you? Every year US News calls health experts to rank popular diets and every year there are changes in ranking. 10 years ago, the DASH diet beat out Atkins, Jenny Craig, Slim-Fast and 15 others to win the crown. It was praised as the best for combating high blood pressure. This year it's number 2, after Mediterranean diet scoring high on weight loss, heart and brain health, diabetes and cancer prevention. For dropping those extra pounds, 10 years ago Weight Watchers ranked No. 1, followed closely by Jenny Craig and the Raw Food Diet. This year i's the Flexitarean Diet. The database has 39 diets, a small fraction of existing "eating plans" built around various personalities and lifestyles. The EAT-Lancet diet is one of those not included - it tries to balance nutrition with environmental concerns. The FODMAP diet - best for IBS - is not ranked either.

US News & World Report puts hard numbers on the common-sense belief that no diet is ideal for everybody. But finding out which diet is best for you could be a cumbersome task. Many apps exist but they are not sufficiently engaging or sufficiently good for your health.

Health gamification research is progressing at a fast pace. Researchers are finding which elements the users of nutrition apps prefer. Food gamers like clear measurable goals, performance graphs, and progress bars, but seem to lack motivating elements found in non-nutrition apps - since digital "rewards", "levels" and "leaderboards" are not sufficiently appealing. And neither is counting calories, gameplay narratives and individual competition.

Gamified nutrition apps show promise. Who'll design the perfect food game?

REFERENCES

Johnson D, Deterding S, Kuhn KA, Staneva A, Stoyanov S, Hides L. Gamification for health and wellbeing: A systematic review of the literature. Internet interventions. 2016 Nov 1;6:89-106.

Gabashvili IS. Why Red Beans and Rice Are Good ... But Not with Coffee, Forbes 2012, April 30. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/04/30/why-red-beans-and-rice-aregood-but-not-with-coffee DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.13600517

Berger, M. and Jung, C., 2021, January. Gamification in Nutrition Apps–Users’ Gamification Element Preferences: A Best-Worst-Scaling Approach. In Proceedings of the 54th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (p. 1335).

Guo YB, Zhuang KM, Kuang L, Zhan Q, Wang XF, Liu SD. Association between diet and lifestyle habits and irritable bowel syndrome: a case-control study. Gut and liver. 2015 Sep;9(5):649.

Van Asbroeck S, Matthys C. Use of Different Food Image Recognition Platforms in Dietary Assessment: Comparison Study. JMIR formative research. 2020 Dec 7;4(12):e15602.

Karkar R, Schroeder J, Epstein DA, Pina LR, Scofield J, Fogarty J, Kientz JA, Munson SA, Vilardaga R, Zia J. Tummytrials: a feasibility study of using self-experimentation to detect individualized food triggers. InProceedings of the 2017 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems 2017 May 2 (pp. 6850-6863).

Precision antibiotics

2021-10-30T14:00:00.023-07:00

Antibiotics can effectively eliminate infection-causing bacteria, but they also perturb microbial communities in the body and this perturbation can be irreversible, depending on the individual. A new study demonstrates that the pre-treatment baseline gut microbiota is a major determinant of whether there will be complete or partial recovery,

or whether antibiotics will shift microbiome to completely new states with little resemblance to the baseline community. This is consistent with the role of pre-treatment microbiota in determining response to fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) and dietary interventions.

New research suggests a strong predictive role for baseline microbiota, especially when antibiotic exposure is less intense. Typically, after antibiotic-induced perturbations, composition of the gut microbiome changes from the baseline (phase 1) followed by post-antibiotic reorganization (phase 2) (original figure) - that will either bring the microbiome back to its initial state, change it slightly or change it dramatically creating a completely new microbiome. The latter is usually called a “regime shift”. A resistant community always resists perturbation, while a resilient community is able to completely recover and stabilize into a fully functional state after antibiotic treatment.

Principal component mixed effect regression using microbiota and granular antibiotic exposure data showed that microbiota departures from baseline depend on the composition of the pre-treatment microbiota. Penalized generalized estimating equations identified 6 taxa within pre-treatment microbiota that predicted the extent of antibiotic-induced perturbations.

In the final model, 5 baseline taxa (Roseburia, Blautia, Eggerthella, a Lachnospiraceae genus, and a Clostridiales genus) predicted larger microbiota departures from baseline, and one taxon (Bacteroides) predicted larger resistance to perturbations.

Specific Roseburia species degrade dietary fiber β-mannan, producing short-chain fatty acids such as butyrate, with numerous and profound homeostatic effects. Similarly, certain Eggerthella species have significant metabolic potential, contributing, for example, to the conversion of dietary fiber-derived lignans to bioactive compounds Antimicrobial peptides produced by certain Blautia species have been shown to confer colonization resistance against antibiotic-resistant pathogens Bacteroides might be exhibiting stabilizing effect via quorum sensing or by secreting antimicrobial compounds such as propionate. Bacteroides fragilis has a protective effect on functional gastrointestinal disorders that are thought of as disorders of homeostatic imbalance

Next-generation precision antibiotics should be specific towards particular pathogens and their genes. They also should be tailored to the baseline host microbiome to prevent the development of functional gastrointestinal disorders.

REFERENCES

Rashidi, A., Ebadi, M., Rehman, T.U. et al. Gut microbiota response to antibiotics is personalized and depends on baseline microbiota. Microbiome 9, 211 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40168-021-01170-2

Autoimmune diseases and COVID-19 vaccines

2021-05-16T18:57:00.008-07:00

Autoimmune diseases occur when the immune system attacks the healthy body tissue within digestive track, joints, vasculature and other organ systems. This causes inflammation, pain, diminished mobility, fatigue, and other non-specific symptoms.

Nearly 4% of the world’s population and 5-8% of U.S. is affected by an autoimmune diseases, the most common of which include type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Crohn’s disease, and psoriasis.

There is no evidence that any vaccines cause flares of autoimmune diseases, used to say doctors. However, there is limited data available since individuals with autoimmune diseases were excluded from phase I–III vaccine trials. And it is known that immunizations could cause flare ups (see, eg, this study of 2020/2021 flu vaccines). Preliminary data from smaller studies and case reports after emergency-use-authorization for SARS-CoV-2 suggest there is a possibility.

A case of a white 55-year-old male who has been in sustained remission from rheumatoid arthritis for more than 2 years describes him developing an acute flare of his rheumatoid arthritis 12 h after the second BNT162b2 vaccination (similarly to flares observed after COVID-19 infection). The patient was treated with intra-articular steroids with rapid improvement, and he is once again in clinical remission.

23-year-old woman who developed acute reactive arthritis on her left knee joint after COVID-19 vaccination with Sinovac CoronaVac was back on her feet in 2 days, after she was administered a single intra-articular injection of 1 ml compound betamethasone.

A 20-year-old man with a history of multiple sclerosis experienced acute myocarditis after the third dose of SARS-COV-2 vaccine (AstraZeneca vaccine). He had received the first and second dose of the SARS-COV-2 vaccine (Sinopharm vaccine) 5 and 4 months before.

More recently published, 27 case reports from Israel, US and UK described 17 flares and 10 new onset immune-mediated diseases. 23/27 received the BNT - 162b2 vaccine, 2/27 the mRNA-1273 and 2/27 the ChAdOx1 vaccines. The mean age was 54.4 ± 19.2 years and 55% of cases were female.

A study that compared 26 people with autoimmune disorders aged 24 to 89 (Rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease, Psoriatic Arthritis, Sarcoidosis, Lupus, etc; none had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 prior to vaccination) with 42 healthy controls. Patients with autoimmune diseases had a marginal propensity towards more vaccine side effects compared with healthy controls: mild fatigue and myalgia were more frequent (53.8% vs 43.2% and 42.3% vs 31.6%) and so was headache (38.5% vs 35.1%). Fever, on the other hand, was completely absent in patients with inflammatory diseases while being reported by 13.5% of the healthy cohort. Arthralgia was comparable in both groups.

Researchers from two different rheumatology departments in Israel monitored 491 patients with autoimmune inflammatory rheumatic diseases (AIRD) and compared their reactions to 99 healthy controls. Shortly after receiving the vaccine, 1.2% of those with AIIRD (six patients total, age range: 36 to 61) developed their first case of shingles compared to none of the controls. Four of the six affected individuals had stable rheumatoid arthritis, one had Sjögren’s syndrome and another one had undifferentiated connective disease. Notably, one patient developed Herpes zoster despite being vaccinated for it two years prior to the reported event.

Multiple cases of apparent secondary immune thrombocytopenia (ITP), an unusual immune reaction triggered after SARS‐CoV‐2 vaccination have been reported and reached public attention.

One case was actually a flareup for a patient with a past medical history of autoimmune bleeding disorder Immune thrombocytopenia (ITP). This patient received the first dose of SARS‐CoV‐2 mRNA‐1273 Moderna Covid‐19 vaccine 2 weeks prior to presentation. Three other individuals that experienced thrombocytopenia had known autoimmune conditions including hypothyroidism, Crohn's disease, or tested positive for anti‐thyroglobulin antibodies. Given that a small percentage of patients with lupus and antiphospholipid syndrome have been previously shown to display serum antibodies against PF-4 in association with thrombotic events constant vigilance is warranted.

Preliminary results of the COVID-19 Back to Normal study show that some individuals with autoimmune diseases do experience flareups and higher frequency of adverse reactions such as enlarged lymph nodes. A smaller percentage of people claim they actually observed improvement in their autoimmune conditions after vaccinations You can help by submitting your observations about effects of vaccinations: https://forms.gle/5xs4XzFUFkhpa2TA9

REFERENCES

Buttari F, Bruno A, Dolcetti E, Azzolini F, Bellantonio P, Centonze D, Fantozzi R. COVID-19 vaccines in multiple sclerosis treated with cladribine or ocrelizumab. Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders. 2021 May 4:102983.

Geisen UM, Berner DK, Tran F, Sümbül M, Vullriede L, Ciripoi M, Reid HM, Schaffarzyk A, Longardt AC, Franzenburg J, Hoff P. Immunogenicity and safety of anti-SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines in patients with chronic inflammatory conditions and immunosuppressive therapy in a monocentric cohort. Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases. 2021 Mar 24.

Furer V, Zisman D, Kibari A, Rimar D, Paran Y, Elkayam O. Herpes zoster following BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 vaccination in patients with autoimmune inflammatory rheumatic diseases: a case series. Rheumatology (Oxford, England). 2021 Apr 12.

Lee EJ, Cines DB, Gernsheimer T, Kessler C, Michel M, Tarantino MD, Semple JW, Arnold DM, Godeau B, Lambert MP, Bussel JB. Thrombocytopenia following Pfizer and Moderna SARS‐CoV‐2 vaccination. American Journal of Hematology. 2021 Feb 19.

Moutsopoulos HM. A recommended paradigm for vaccination of rheumatic disease patients with the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Journal of Autoimmunity. 2021 May 1:102649.

Terracina KA, Tan FK. Flare of rheumatoid arthritis after COVID-19 vaccination. The Lancet. Rheumatology. 2021 Mar 30.

Toom S, Wolf B, Avula A, Peeke S, Becker K. Familial thrombocytopenia flare‐up following the first dose of mRNA‐1273 Covid‐19 vaccine. American Journal of Hematology. 2021 Feb 13.

Qi-jun An, De-an Qin & Jin-xian Pei (2021) Reactive arthritis after COVID-19 vaccination, Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics, DOI: 10.1080/21645515.2021.1920274

Watad A, De Marco G, Mahajna H, Druyan A, Eltity M, Hijazi N, Haddad A, Elias M, Zisman D, Naffaa ME, Brodavka M. Immune-Mediated Disease Flares or New-Onset Disease in 27 Subjects Following mRNA/DNA SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination. Vaccines. 2021 May;9(5):435.

Irritable Bowel and COVID-19

2021-01-20T18:02:00.006-08:00

The first symptoms of Coronavirus disease (day 0) begin from two to 14 days after exposure to the virus (marked as day –5 in the figure below, since median time is about five days). The disease affects

different people in different ways. A recent article identified 6 distinct types of COVID-19 with different symptoms, some of which are hallmarks of the most severe forms of the disease. SARS-CoV-2-infected patients usually first experience a fever. The fever is often followed by a dry cough or fatigue and muscle pain, followed by GI tract symptoms, if they ever occur. Some people, experience nausea or have diarrhea in the days just before the fever begins.

Gastrointestinal symptoms are reported in about one third of COVID-19 cases, the most common is loss of appetite - it can happen even in the mildest form of the disease. Nausea/vomiting and diarrhea are slightly less common. Abdominal pain is even less widely known in COVID-19, yet it is - along with shortness of breath and confusion - is a potential sign of the most severe form of COVID-19. In children, having gastrointestinal symptoms was more frequently associated with severe and critical phenotype (Giacomet et al, 2020). Hyperinflammatory syndrome was presenting with both cardiac and significant GI symptoms (diarrhea, vomit, abdominal pain).

Some researchers suggest that gut dysfunction may exacerbate the severity of infection by enabling the virus to access the surface of the digestive tract and internal organs. These organs are vulnerable to infection because they have widespread ACE2—a protein target of SARS-CoV-2 for its possible routes of entry —on the surface. ACE2 is abundantly present in the epithelia of the lung and small intestine.

Yet, even if SARS-CoV-2 reaches the GI tract, it may not cause GI problems. An inflamed leaky gut, however, may be associated with a higher risk of severe illness and the microbial imbalance of the gut affecting gut barrier integrity can allow pathogens and pathobionts easier access to cells in the intestinal lining.

Several studies have already demonstrated that, when compared with healthy individuals, COVID-19 patients present a significantly reduced bacterial diversity and higher abundancy of opportunistic Streptococcus, Rothia, Veilonella, and Actinomyces compared to depleted levels of beneficial Agathobacter, Fusicatenibacter, Roseburia, and Ruminococcaceae UCG-013. Rothia was preeviously thought to contribute to the pathogenesis of pneumonia. Critically ill patients on mechanical ventilation who were given probiotics experienced decrease in viral colonization when compared with placebo. However, the efficacy of probiotics use in COVID-19 patients and other bowel remedies remains to be proved.

REFERENES

La Marca A, Capuzzo M, Paglia T, Roli L, Trenti T, Nelson SM. Testing for SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19): a systematic review and clinical guide to molecular and serological in-vitro diagnostic assays. Reproductive biomedicine online. 2020 Jun 14.

Oshima T, Siah KT, Yoshimoto T, Miura K, Tomita T, Fukui H, Miwa H. Impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic on functional dyspepsia and irritable bowel syndrome: A population‐based survey. Journal of gastroenterology and hepatology. 2020 Nov 16.

Sudre CH, Lee KA, Lochlainn MN, Varsavsky T, Murray B, Graham MS, Menni C, Modat M, Bowyer RC, Nguyen LH, Drew DA. Symptom clusters in Covid19: A potential clinical prediction tool from the COVID Symptom study app. MedRxiv. 2020 Jan 1.

Riphagen S, Gomez X, Gonzalez-Martinez C, et al. Hyperinflammatory shock in children during COVID-19 pandemic. Lancet. 2020;395:1607–1608.

Giacomet V, Barcellini L, Stracuzzi M, Longoni E, Folgori L, Leone A, Zuccotti GV. Gastrointestinal Symptoms in Severe COVID-19 Children. The Pediatric infectious disease journal. 2020 Aug 10;39(10):e317-20.

Cholankeril G, Podboy A, Aivaliotis VI, Tarlow B, Pham EA, Spencer SP, Kim D, Hsing A, Ahmed A. High Prevalence of Concurrent Gastrointestinal Manifestations in Patients With Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2: Early Experience From California. Gastroenterology. 2020 Aug 1;159(2):775-7.

Gu, S.; Chen, Y.; Wu, Z.; Chen, Y.; Gao, H.; Lv, L.; Guo, F.; Zhang, X.; Luo, R.; Huang, C.; et al. Alterations of the Gut Microbiota in Patients with COVID-19 or H1N1 Influenza. Clin. Infect. Dis. 2020, 71, 2669–2678.

Dhar, D.; Mohanty, A. Gut microbiota and Covid-19- possible link and implications. Virus Res. 2020, 285, 198018.

Kim HS. Do an Altered Gut Microbiota and an Associated Leaky Gut Affect COVID-19 Severity?. mBio. 2021 Feb 23;12(1).

Ferreira, C.; Viana, S.D.; Reis, F. Is Gut Microbiota Dysbiosis a Predictor of Increased Susceptibility to Poor Outcome of COVID-19 Patients? An Update. Microorganisms 2021, 9, 53.

Microbiome-based strategies for IBS

2020-09-30T13:43:00.001-07:00

There is evidence that the microbiome is implicated in the pathogenesis of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), or associated with it in one way or another. Many patients can trace their symptom onset back to infectious gastroenteritis or multiple courses of antibiotics. Microbiome-based strategies (eg, probiotics, diet, antibiotics) offer benefits to subsets of patients and so does the use of fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT).

Development of microbiome-directed medicine is stalled by the laborious nature of conventional cultivation methods and insufficient data for machine learning-driven approaches. Read more ...

Who is afraid of IBS?

2016-11-18T07:02:00.000-08:00

Irritable bowel syndrome, also known as IBS, used to be a rare condition, but - due to industrialization and urbanization - it is now one of the most common disorders in the world. The term is even used figuratively, in a derogatory sense.

The numbers of new reported cases of irritable bowel syndrome kept increasing into the 21st century when they reached almost epidemic proportions. As the amount of information available on the Internet exploded, so did the web searches about IBS. But then the disorder "came out of the closet", and google searches for "irritable bowel syndrome" started to dwindle, reaching a quarter of what they used to be at the peak. This downtrend mirrored ambulatory data (National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey) showing that by 2010, the rate of IBS-related visits decreased roughly by 37%.

Is IBS no longer a problem?

Making Digestion Health Easier to Digest

2015-05-10T16:01:00.003-07:00

From balloons inserted into stomach or colon to the dreaded colonoscopy, digestive diagnostic procedures are not fun. Tracking diet and symptoms, too, is tedious and frustrating - unless, like a mouse, you can be isolated in a chamber linked to analyzers that automatically measure everything for you.

New noninvasive tests are emerging, but adoption is slow. Medicare and most insurance plans won’t pay for a less invasive version of the conventional colonoscopy - CT colonography - as its lacks the sensitivity and specificity of the traditional test.

Pill cameras for the detection of colorectal polyps and cancer are, too, still inferior to those of standard colonoscopy. Besides, even though these tests are much faster and less invasive than conventional techniques, patients still need a cleansing preparation of their bowel prior to the test. In addition, the pill camera that usually exits the body after 10 hours, has to be surgically removed in 8% of the patients. And virtual colonoscopy leads to more “incidentalomas" and unnecessary treatments. A few novel endoscopic innovations also have uncertain clinical relevance.

A simple wearable tracker of intestinal gas recently proposed by a Brazilian designer and telecommunications major does not seem to attract much interest in consumers. Perhaps it is because it offers too little information? After all, even the cow health tracker - Well Cow pill - measures not only the gas-forming potential of foods, but also pH and temperature within the digestive system to better monitor the healthiness of diet.

Accurate measurement of intestinal gases could offer new insights into lives of human gut microbes and metabolic activities. Two novel techniques, in vitro fermentation and swallowable gas capsule systems, for measuring and assessing selected gas species, were recently proposed and could potentially be used for less invasive diagnostics of irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, colon cancer, and other gastrointestinal conditions. But could not we do better than popping gas sensor "pills" for easy every-day measurements of digestive health?

We at Aurametrix think so. Stay tuned for more.

REFERENCES

Ou JZ, Yao CK, Rotbart A, Muir JG, Gibson PR, & Kalantar-Zadeh K (2015). Human intestinal gas measurement systems: in vitro fermentation and gas capsules. Trends in biotechnology, 33 (4), 208-213 PMID: 25772639

Speakman, J. (2013). Measuring Energy Metabolism in the Mouse – Theoretical, Practical, and Analytical Considerations Frontiers in Physiology, 4 DOI: 10.3389/fphys.2013.00034

von Delius S, Schmid RM, & Meining A (2010). Pill camera. Endoscopy, 42 Suppl 2 PMID: 20556714

Intestinal Parasites: Friends, Foes and Shades of Gray

2014-11-10T13:43:00.001-08:00

Parasite is a bad word with negative connotations. Yet, "bad things" can be good for you - and every situation is different.

About one third of people in the world carry at least one parasite in their gastrointestinal tract (the numbers reported vary from 2-4% in Japanese residing in developing countries to 6% in patients of a specialized private hospital in Saudi Arabia, 7% among individuals with mental retardation in New York, 17% in HIV patients with low CD4 counts in France, 30% in households of USA, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, 40% in Pakistan and Brasil, to over 50% in Nigeria, 50-70% in Morocco and almost 100% in Senegal). Prevalence varies between countries and within communities. Women and children appear to harbor larger numbers of parasites. But men, in general, may be less healthy than women, so the relationship between health and intestinal parasites is not as straightforward as one might think.

Let's take a look at three studies published this year.

Paper by Lukeš and co-authors (2014) suggests that intestinal parasites such as Blastocystis (single celled protozoa closely related to algae and molds) and nematodes (e.g., tapeworms or hookworms) can be actually beneficial to human health. To prove the point, Julius Lukeš even ingested a handful of tapeworms called Diphyllobothrium latum. After more than a year with the tapeworms, which might have grown to be as long as four meters each by now, he still feels healthy and convinced that we should rethink our views of organisms that live off our bodies.

According to a Danish study (Krogsgaard et al, 2014), Blastocystis could be rare in individuals with low microbial diversity, disturbed by antibiotic treatment, inflammation, infection and diet, while common in the healthy population. Healthy individuals are more likely to carry intestinal parasites (50% vs 36%) than those with IBS and IBD. Protozoa Blastocystis and Dientamoeba were the most common parasites found. D fragilis was detected in a greater proportion of fecal samples from controls than cases (35% vs 23%; P = .03), and so was Blastocystis (22% of controls vs 15% of cases; P = .09), and combinations of parasite species (16% of controls vs 8% of cases; P = .05). D fragilis infection was more likely among those with low frequency of defecation and those having children 5 to 18 years old in the household. Blastocystis was associated with high income, increasing age, no animals in the household and drinking bottled water. These results are drawn from analyzing hundreds of individuals - 124 cases/204 controls.

Smaller and more focused studies, however, do find association between Blastocystis and IBS.

A recent French study compared the prevalence of Blastocystis among 56 IBS patients and 56 control and found that Blastocystis species are likely to couse IBS symptoms in men (prevalence was 37% in IBS sufferers vs 5% in healthy men; difference in women was not statistically significant). One of the older smaller studies that indicated possible relation between Blastocytes and IBS (Funda Dogruman-Al et al., 2009) suggested that Blastocystis don't really attack the body, it's the human organism that attacks the microbes first and the outcome is the result of defensive actions by the microbes. Obviously, symptoms do depend on many other health factors. Nourrisson and co-authors identified them as the prevalence of certain "good" bacteria. Men are more likely to get constipated when their Blastocystis leads to a significant decrease in Bifidobacterium species. On the other hand, they are doing just fine if Blastocystis causes decrease in Faecalibacterium prausnitzii - relatively good bacteria known for its anti-inflammatory properties,

Another interesting insight into the impact of a complex interplay of environmental factors on our health. Still a long way to go to understand how we interact with microbes that call us home.

REFERENCES

Lukeš J, Kuchta R, Scholz T, & Pomajbíková K (2014). (Self-) infections with parasites: re-interpretations for the present. Trends in parasitology, 30 (8), 377-85 PMID: 25033775
press release

Krogsgaard LR, Engsbro AL, Stensvold CR, Nielsen HV, & Bytzer P (2014). The Prevalence of Intestinal Parasites Is Not Greater Among Individuals With Irritable Bowel Syndrome: a Population-Based Case-Control Study. Clinical gastroenterology and hepatology : the official clinical practice journal of the American Gastroenterological Association PMID: 25229421

Nourrisson C, Scanzi J, Pereira B, NkoudMongo C, Wawrzyniak I, Cian A, Viscogliosi E, Livrelli V, Delbac F, Dapoigny M, & Poirier P (2014). Blastocystis Is Associated with Decrease of Fecal Microbiota Protective Bacteria: Comparative Analysis between Patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Control Subjects. PloS one, 9 (11) PMID: 25365580

El Safadi D, Gaayeb L, Meloni D, Cian A, Poirier P, et al. (2014) Children of Senegal River Basin show the highest prevalence of Blastocystis sp. ever observed worldwide. BMC Infect Dis 14: 164 doi:10.1186/1471-2334-14-164.

Boorom KF, Smith H, Nimri L, Viscogliosi E, Spanakos G, Parkar U, Li LH, Zhou XN, Ok UZ, Leelayoova S, Jones MS: (2008) Oh my aching gut: irritable bowel syndrome, Blastocystis, and asymptomatic infection. Parasit Vectors, 1:40 2

Krogsgaard LR, Engsbro AL, & Bytzer P (2013). The epidemiology of irritable bowel syndrome in Denmark. A population-based survey in adults ≤50 years of age. Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology, 48 (5), 523-9 PMID: 23506174

(2004) Intestinal parasites prevalence and related factors in school children, a western city sample--Turkey. BMC Public Health. 2004 Dec 22;4:64.

Houmsou R.S., Amuta E.U., Olusi T.A. (2010) Prevalence of intestinal parasites among primary school children in Makurdi, Benue State- Nigeria. Internet Journal of Infectious Diseaes. vol.8, 1, p.2

Schupf N, Ortiz M, Kapell D, Kiely M, Rudelli RD. Prevalence of intestinal parasite infections among individuals with mental retardation in New York State. Ment Retard. 1995 Apr;33(2):84–8

Sah, Ram; Bhattarai, Sailesh; Yadav, Satish; Baral, Ratna; Nilambar; Pokharel, Paras (2013) A study of prevalence of intestinal parasites and associated risk factors among the school children of Itahari, Eastern Region of Nepal. Tropical Parasitology, 3, 2, 140-144, DOI 10.4103/2229-5070.122143

Oman Med J. May 2011; 26(3): 182–185. doi: 10.5001/omj.2011.44 PMCID: PMC3191688 Dina AM Zaglool,1 Yousif AW Khodari,2 Zohair J. Gazzaz,3 Khalid O. Dhafar,4 Hani AS Shaker,5 and Mian U. Farooq
nt J Infect Dis. 2012 Sep;16(9):e677-9. doi: 10.1016/j.ijid.2012.05.1022. Epub 2012 Jul 6.

Prevalence of opportunistic intestinal parasitic infections among HIV-infected patients with low CD4 cells counts in France in the combination antiretroviral therapy era. Pavie J1, Menotti J, Porcher R, Donay JL, Gallien S, Sarfati C, Derouin F, Molina JM.

Jeevitha Dhanabal, Pradeep Pushparaj Selvadoss, and Kanchana Muthuswamy (2014) Comparative Study of the Prevalence of Intestinal Parasites in Low Socioeconomic Areas from South Chennai, India. Journal of Parasitology Research Volume 2014 (2014), Article ID 630968, 7 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/630968

Blagburn BL1, Schenker R, Gagne F, Drake J.(2008) Vet Ther. 2008 Fall;9(3):169-75. Prevalence of intestinal parasites in companion animals in Ontario and Quebec, Canada, during the winter months.

Hamada A1, Okuzawa E, Kawabuchi Y, Nishikawa T. (1998) Kansenshogaku Zasshi. 1998 Dec;72(12):1283-8. [Prevalence of intestinal parasites among Japanese residents in developing countries]. [Article in Japanese]

Hirata, T., Nakamura, H., Kinjo, N., Hokama, A., Kinjo, F., Yamane, N. et al. (2007) Prevalence of Blastocystis hominis and Strongyloides stercoralis infection in Okinawa, Japan. Parasitol Res 101: 17171719.

Javed Yakoob, Wasim Jafri, Nadim Jafri, Rustam Khan, Muhammad Islam, M. Asim Beg, and Viqar Zaman (2004) Irritable bowel syndrome: in search of an etiology: role of Blastocystis hominis Am. J. Trop. Med. Hyg., 70(4), pp. 383–385

Digestive Diagnostics: Portable, Wearable, Insideable

2014-02-03T20:20:00.001-08:00

Next sensors will be in you, said a recent popular article. And some of them will monitor your digestive system.

Accurate monitoring of digestion is hard. There are apps and high tech gadgets for that - like a fork that monitors eating speed or a watch that counts bites, but neither of them can provide a continuous and objective measures of what exactly is eaten and how it affects the digestive system.

Thanks to wonders of modern technology, cows now have a device that can monitor the effects of food on their digestive system. Well Cow bovine health monitor, an inch thick capsule almost as long as human hand, can be swallowed by a cow and measure the rumen pH and temperature within the digestive system every 15 minutes. It then transmits the data to a Bluetooth collar around the cow’s neck. This data can help to monitor the healthiness of cow's food intake, to predict its gas-forming potential in the short term, make sure it will lead to a high quality milk or prevent the development of health issues such as acidosis or infertility in the long term. The device can last between 80 to 100 days inside the cows.

A smaller vitamin-sized device (1mm x 26mm with weight less than 4 grams) was recently approved for use in humans. This ingestible pill camera - PillCamSB - can monitor pressure, pH and temperature, gastrointestinal motility, lesions, ulcers, early signs of tumors and bleeding within the small bowel. FDA approved it for patients who have experienced an incomplete colonoscopy, as its lower-resolution-imaging can't completely replace the procedure.

Food we eat and drugs we take can communicate from our insides too - Ingestible Event Maker sensor - size of a grain of sand - can be attached to any pill or a food item.

Perhaps in the future we could rely on "insideables" to monitor our diet and automatically generate recommendations on what to eat and what to avoid?

According to a song, The Future's So Bright Gotta Wear Shades.

REFERENCES

Kiourti, Asimina. (2014). Implantable and ingestible medical devices with wireless telemetry functionalities: A review of current status and challenges. Bioelectromagnetics, 35 (1), 1-15 DOI: 10.1002/bem.21813

Hoskins, S.; Sobering, T.; Andresen, D.; Warren, S. (2009). Near-field wireless magnetic link for an ingestible cattle health monitoring pill Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, 2009. EMBC 2009. Annual International Conference of the IEEE DOI: 10.1109/IEMBS.2009.5332812

Wong WM, Bautista J, Dekel R, et al. Feasibility and tolerability of transnasal / per-oral placement of the wireless pH capsule vs. traditional 24-h oesophageal pH monitoring – a randomized trial. Aliment Pharmacol Ther. 2005; 21(2): 155-163.

Hirono I, Richter JE. Practice Parameters Committee of the American College of Gastroenterology. ACG practice guidelines: esophageal reflux testing. Am J Gastroenterol. 2007; 102(3): 668-685.

Teunissen LP, de Haan A, de Koning JJ, Daanen HA. Telemetry pill versus rectal and esophageal temperature during extreme rates of exercise-induced core temperature change. Physiol Meas. 2012 Jun;33(6):915-24. doi: 10.1088/0967-3334/33/6/915. Epub 2012 May 3.

IBS: pity, compassion and discrimination

2013-10-29T11:15:00.000-07:00

The effects of IBS on quality of life may be more substantial than those of many other chronic diseases. It affects school, work and life, putting the sufferers at risk for social isolation.

Numerous books, columns and blogs about this condition affirm that social problems arise because the sufferers are trying to hide the fact they have IBS from others. Keeping secrets is stressful, while being upfront and coming out of the closet is the best strategy. Is it really?

Studies about emotional reactions towards people with chronic condition often lead to mixed results.
For example, there was a slight increase in the readiness to feel pity to depressed people since the 90s, yet there was no increase in compassion.

The most important consequence of TMAU - a metabolic disorder causing an offensive body odor - is social. This condition is not a subject of compassion, but rejection and ridicule resulting in low self-esteem, social ostracizing, anxiety and depression.

Obese people (body mass index of 35 or higher - a condition that can't be hidden and kept in secret) are more likely to report day-to-day interpersonal discrimination and mistreatment. Recent study showed that weight discrimination makes people 2.5 times more obese after 4 years of discrimination instead of helping them to reduce their weight. People don't feel compassion as they consider obese individuals lazy, unsuccessful and weak-willed.

Same can be applied to IBS.

"The hardest thing is that other people who don’t have IBS can never understand what it is like”, says a sufferer in comments to an online article. People with IBS are often discriminated and the blows to self-esteem make it harder for them to make meaningful changes to their lifestyle, and to ease the symptoms.

Compassion is a very valuable process that motivates sufferers as well as people around them to cooperate in achieving better outcomes. Professional education - based on visual arts and other methods - is often recommended in developing compassionate physicians, dietitians and nurses. But shouldn't we teach society as a whole to be non-judgemental, treating sufferers of chronic conditions with respect and compassion? And what should those with chronic illness do in the current society?

Don't view your condition as a weakness and - when you need to tell others about it - keep it unemotional. People don't like sob stories, no matter how true or heartbreaking they are. Don't look for pity, impress them with your strength. Be able to tell the difference between a joke and bullying. Have a laugh with them and try to find better job environments and people that care.

REFERENCES

Sutin AR, & Terracciano A (2013). Perceived weight discrimination and obesity. PloS one, 8 (7) PMID: 23894586

Angermeyer MC, & Matschinger H (2004). Public attitudes to people with depression: have there been any changes over the last decade? Journal of affective disorders, 83 (2-3), 177-82 PMID: 15555711

Bray L, O'Brien MR, Kirton J, Zubairu K, & Christiansen A (2013). The role of professional education in developing compassionate practitioners: A mixed methods study exploring the perceptions of health professionals and pre-registration students. Nurse education today PMID: 23880325

Is Your Work Giving you IBS?

2013-06-09T10:05:00.002-07:00

All jobs come with health risks. Some risks are obvious in the short-term, others seem very minor but with plenty of negative long-term consequences. Such as weight gain or irritable bowel syndrome.

Most likely to gain weight on the job

Recent CareerBuilder report shows that employees spending long hours behind a desk or experiencing high levels of stress gain weight on the job. Chances to gain weight are 69% for administrative assistants, 56% for engineers including software developers, 51% for teachers and K-12 instructors, 51% for B14 nurse practitioners and physician assistants, 51% for IT managers and network administrators, 46% for attorneys, judges and legal professionals, 45% for operators, assembly line and production workers and 39% for biological, physical and social scientists.

Irritable Bowel Syndrome is also associated with stressful, sedentary and less regular lifestyles. Some studies showed that this common disorder is more prevalent among the unemployed, those with lower income and education. But this could be a consequence rather than the cause. As IBS is more likely to occur in teenagers and singles (or stressed heads of households) under the age of 40. And the younger the person, the more it affects the social functioning, making it more difficult to get higher education, employment and advance career.

Studies all over the world showed that students are among the most vulnerable to IBS populations. The risk of getting it is 30% or higher. High stress, irregular schedules and lousy diets are a way of life for most students. Attending a university or college is a stressful experience, indeed. IBS flareups, however, do not directly correlate with stress per se, rather with the perceived stress. A study that looked at military veterans, for example, found that those who developed IBS had twice higher rates of anxiety and depression than other veterans. Female veterans suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder had 3-9 times higher rate of IBS. Prevalence of IBS in female veterans was about 40%, higher than for students. Rates of IBS among another stressful profession - nursing - are about the same as for students. But rates for rotating shift nurses can be as high as almost 50% - even higher than for military personnel.

So, if you want to avoid IBS, become a dietitian - it's one of the least stressful jobs with fixed hours and opportunities to think about healthy food choices. Or be your own Aurametrix, to find what foods, activities and environmental exposures work best for you - and in what amounts and combinations.

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