Obesity and Diabetes – Is Your Gut in Control?

August 28, 2015 by

Aug. 21, 2015

By Medical Discovery News

Your body is like a forest, providing a home to microscopic flora and fauna. In fact, your body is home to up to 100 times more microbes than your own cells, which make up your microbiome. While we provide them residence, these microbes help us out by providing a first line of defense against disease trying to invade our bodies, even breaking down food during digestion and producing vitamins. Now, the microbes that live in the digestive tract are helping us understand diabetes better.

According to the Human Microbiome Project sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the microbiome plays a huge role in human health. When the microbiome is altered or imbalanced, it can cause conditions like obesity, irritable bowel syndrome, skin disease, urogenital infection, allergy, and can even affect emotion and behavior.

Recently, scientists from Israel discovered another surprising effect of the microbiome while investigating the use of artificial sweeteners in relation to glucose intolerance and diabetes. Artificial sweeteners such as saccharin, sucralose, and aspartame are commonly used in weight loss strategies because they do not add calories while still satisfying sweet cravings. However, artificial sweeteners are not always effective in managing weight and glucose, and scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science may have figured out why.

Through experimentation they observed that adding artificial sweeteners to the diets of mice caused significant metabolic changes, including increasing blood sugar levels more than mice fed regular sugar. It didn’t matter whether the mouse was obese or at a normal weight, they all reacted the same. Dietary changes can alter the populations of bacteria in our guts, so the study addressed whether those changes affected blood glucose levels as well. After being treated with saccharin for nine days, the populations of gut bacteria in the mice shifted dramatically and corresponded with an increase in their glycemic index. Specifically, the bacterial group Bacteroidetes increased while the group Clostridiales decreased. These changes in bacterial populations is associated with obesity in mice and people.

When they administered antibiotics to reverse this and return the bacterial populations to a healthy state, it also countered the effects of saccharin, returning glucose levels to normal. To take it a step further, researchers took feces from saccharin-consuming mice showing glucose intolerance and transplanted them into other mice that had never consumed saccharin. Remarkably, those mice started showing signs of glucose intolerance.

In a study of 400 people, those who consumed artificial sweeteners had a gut microbiome that was vastly different from those who did not. They had a group of people consume high levels of artificial sweeteners for seven days, and like the rats their glucose levels increased and their microbiomes changed.

Overall, these studies show that artificial sweeteners may induce glucose intolerance instead of preventing it due to the intimate connection between the bacteria that live in our digestive systems and our metabolic state. In the future, expect to see diagnostic and therapeutic procedures that utilize our microbial friends.

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A Way Our of Our Antibiotic Crisis

August 28, 2015 by

July 24, 2015

By Medical Discovery News

A petri dish

Antibiotic resistance occurs when strains of bacteria that infect people – such as staph, tuberculosis, and gonorrhea – do not respond to antibiotic treatments. In America, 2 million people become infected with resistant bacteria every year and at least 23,000 die each year because of those infections. If nothing is done to stop or slow the resistance of bacteria to antibiotics, the World Health Organization (WHO) warns that we will find ourselves in a post-antibiotic world, in which minor injuries and common infections will be life-threatening once again.

The crisis arose primarily from three conditions. First, when people are given a weeks’ worth of antibiotics and stop taking them as soon as symptoms improve, they often expose the bacteria causing their infection to the medicine without killing it. This allows the bacteria to quickly mutate to further avoid the effects of the antibiotic. Second, antibiotics are over-prescribed. Most common illnesses like the cold, flu, sore throat, bronchitis, and ear infection are caused by viruses, not bacteria, so antibiotics are essentially useless against them. Yet they are prescribed 60-70 percent of the time for these infections. This once again provides bacteria in the body unnecessary contact with antibiotics. Third, tons of antibiotics are used every year in the agriculture industry. They are fed to livestock on a regular basis with feed to promote growth and theoretically for good health. But animals are also prone to bacterial infections, and now, to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which spreads to humans who eat their meat or who eat crops that have been fertilized by the livestock. The good news is that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is working to focus antibiotic use on bacterial infections and regulate its use in livestock.

An easy solution to this problem might be to create new antibiotics, but it’s not that simple. It takes an average of 12 years and millions of dollars to research new antibiotics and make them available on the market, which is a huge investment considering they are normally only taken for up to 10 days. But there’s an even bigger challenge: microbiologists can only cultivate about 1 percent of all bacteria in the lab, including specimens that live in and on the human body. The ability to grow diverse bacteria is important because most antibiotics actually come from bacteria, produced as a defense against other microbes.

Slava Epstein, a professor of microbial ecology at Northeastern University, came up with an ingenious approach to solving this problem. He speculated that we are unable to grow these bacteria in the lab because we were not providing the essential nutrients they needed to grow. Working with soil bacteria, which are a huge source for developing antibiotics, he created the iChip. The iChip allows bacteria to grow directly in soil, which is their natural environment, while being monitored.

To date, about 24 potential antimicrobials have been identified from 50,000 bacteria that remain unable to grow in the lab. With possibly billions of bacteria left to grow and examine, the number of new drugs awaiting discovery is seemingly endless.

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The Catastrophe of Antibiotic Resistance

March 17, 2015 by

March 6, 2015

By Medical Discovery News

The Catastrophe of Antibiotic Resistance

The World Health Organization has categorized antibiotic resistance as “a major global threat” and multidisciplinary research teams estimate it could lead to 10 million deaths each year by 2050. Bacteria that cause disease in humans can become resistant to the drugs used to treat them, and this poses a growing problem to public health.

Antibiotics were first introduced in the 1940s with the discovery and development of penicillin and saved many people from otherwise life-threatening infections. This one class of drugs has had an incredible impact on decreasing the severity of infections and saving lives.

Lately antibiotics have become overused and misused, which has allowed bacteria to mutate in ways that render antibiotics relatively powerless. Bacteria were one of the earliest life forms on Earth and remain one of the most successful, present everywhere from Arctic glaciers to geothermal springs. Because they are masters of adaptation, exposure to antibiotics causes the bacteria to accumulate mutations that will allow them to ignore the action of the antibiotics. That’s why doctors should only prescribe an antibiotic in the likelihood of a bacterial infection, and why it’s important to take all of the prescribed doses of an antibiotic. Otherwise, you can give the bacteria enough contact with the antibiotic to mutate but not enough to kill them, and they can come back stronger.

Half the use of antibiotics does not come from a doctor’s office or hospital, but a farm. Chickens, pigs, cows, and other livestock raised for food production are fed antibiotics to prevent infections and for faster weight gain. Many countries now ban this practice, and in 2013 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asked pharmaceutical companies to voluntarily curtail the sale of antibiotics directly to famers. Today, 26 pharmaceutical companies will only issue antibiotics for animals with a veterinarian’s prescription.

Infections by drug-resistant bacteria can be twice as likely to result in hospitalization and death. And while some bacteria are resistant to a single antibiotic, others are resistant to many. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), multi-drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhea, and multi-drug-resistant Clostridium difficile are superbugs taking a devastating toll worldwide. Some bacteria have mutated against all forms of antibiotics normally used to treat them, leaving no effective treatment options. Such infections are occurring around the globe in both rich and developing countries.

Legislation in the U.S. Congress proposes to permanently ban antibiotics that are used in humans from being used in livestock as well.  However, some argue that there is not a clear link between the antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains generated in livestock practices and those seen in human disease, which requires more intense research to answer. Whatever the outcome, the emergence and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria must be stopped. We also desperately need to develop new antimicrobials human use.

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Quick Diagnosis for Early Treatment

December 19, 2014 by

Dec. 12, 2014

By Medical Discovery News

Quick Diagnosis for Early Treatment

The time it takes to test for the cause of an infection ranges from minutes to weeks. A new generation of biosensors may change that, as they are being developed to identify the viral, bacterial, or fungal origin of an illness within a few hours, allowing physicians to begin the correct treatment sooner.

Many infections have symptoms that resemble the flu, such as HIV, the fungal infection coccidioidomycosis, Ebola, and even anthrax. This makes it very difficult to make a diagnosis. The emergence of new microbial pathogens such as SARS and MERS and bacterial resistance to antibiotics only adds to the fight against infectious agents. Scientists like Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch developed the traditional method for diagnosing infectious disease about 150 years ago, and modern methods have improved their discoveries.

Viruses, bacteria, and fungi have genetic information contained in DNA, RNA, or both. Each strand of DNA or RNA is made of four kinds of building blocks called nucleotides: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T) in DNA or uracil (U) in RNA. Every species has a unique genetic code as seen in its arrangement of nucleotides, and by unlocking that code scientists can determine their identity. Each of the nucleotides has a different molecular weight, so the number of each nucleotide in a strand of DNA or RNA can be determined by measuring it on a device called a mass spectrometer. This can identify a microbial pathogen faster than the traditional culturing method, and can also identify those that can’t be grown in a lab.

However, the massive amount of DNA and RNA in a patient’s own cells complicates things. To tackle this problem, inventors of the new biosensor have coupled a mass spectrometer with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify any piece of genetic information that matches a known sequence from a pathogen. The sensor can then detect a very broad array of potential pathogens simultaneously.

Scientists have been very careful in selecting the unique genetic regions of various pathogens for this test. Once the PCR is used to amplify pieces of potential pathogens in the sample, the mass spectrometer spits out a series of numbers that can be cross-referenced to a database of over 1,000 pathogens that cause human disease in just a few hours.

For example, two children were hospitalized with flu-like symptoms in Southern California in 2009. They tested positive for the flu virus, but doctors did not know which strain of the flu they had. The new sensor analyzed their samples and revealed that both children were infected with H1N1, otherwise known as swine flu, which was not circulating at that time. H1N1 became a pandemic strain with cases all around the world.

This new technology represents a universal pathogen detector, capable of identifying the organism responsible for a person’s illness in just a few hours. Networking the detectors between hospitals and health departments would quickly identify outbreaks and possibly save lives.

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How Clean is Too Clean?

November 1, 2014 by

Oct. 31, 2014

By Medical Discovery News

Cleaning supplies

Common knowledge and previous studies generally agree that children who grow up in the inner city and are exposed to mouse allergens, roach allergens, and air pollutants are more likely to develop asthma and allergies. But a recent study adds a new twist – children exposed to these substances in their first year of life actually had lower rates of asthma and allergies. However, if these allergens were first encountered after age one, this protective effect did not exist.

Another study parallels this one, concluding that children growing up on farms also have lower allergy and asthma rates. Scientists argue that farm children are regularly exposed to microbes and allergens at an early age, leading to this same protective effect.

Asthma is the most common chronic condition among children. One in five Americans, or 60 million people, has asthma and allergies. In the industrialized world, allergic diseases have been on the rise for more than 50 years. Worldwide, 40-50 percent of school-age children are sensitive to one or more common allergens.

In this study, scientists enrolled 467 children from the inner cities of Baltimore, Boston, New York City, and St. Louis and followed their health since birth. The infants were tested for allergies and wheezing by periodic blood tests, skin-prick tests, and physical exams, and their parents were surveyed. They also sampled and analyzed the allergens and dust in the homes of over 100 of the subjects.

Children who lived in home environments that included cat and mouse dander as well as cockroach droppings in their first year of life were much less likely to develop wheezing or allergies when compared to children who were not exposed to these substances. This protective effect was additive, so children exposed to all three were less likely to develop wheezing compared to children exposed to two, and those children were more protected than those who were exposed to only one. Only 17 percent of children who lived in homes with all three allergens experienced wheezing by age three, compared to 51 percent of children who lived in homes without such allergens. Interestingly, dog dander did not have a protective effect against the development of allergies or wheezing.

The richness of the bacterial populations children were exposed to enhanced this protective effect. This suggests that household pests may be the source of some of the beneficial bacteria in the inner city environment. Early exposure to allergens and certain bacteria together provide the greatest effect.

An infant’s microbiome, the total makeup of bacteria in and on their bodies, is developed during their first year of life. The bacteria colonizing an infant’s gastrointestinal system affects their immune system and influences the development of allergies. Scientists hypothesize that something similar may be happening in the airways and lungs, as kids with asthma have altered bacterial populations in their respiratory systems.

There is mounting evidence exposures to allergens and bacteria in the first few months of life help shape the respiratory health of children. But we don’t yet know how specific allergens and bacteria induce this protective effect, or how they can be used to treat children and reduce their chances of developing allergies and asthma.

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Semi-Precious Pathogens

October 17, 2014 by

Oct. 17, 2014

By Medical Discovery News

Bug in amber

Some diseases are older than others. AIDS, for instance, is a recent phenomenon, while malaria has plagued humans for millennia. Recently, scientists examining ticks fossilized in amber found they were infected with bacteria similar to those that cause Lyme disease, a spirochete named Borrelia burgdorferi. Lyme disease is a bacterial infection caused by the bite of an infected tick. The discovery of an ancient Borrelia-like bacterium, now named Palaeoborrelia dominicana, shows that tick-borne diseases have been around for millions of years.

Lyme disease was identified in the early 1970s when mysterious cases of rheumatoid arthritis struck children in Lyme, Conn., and two other nearby towns. The first symptom is a rash called erythema migrans, which begins with a small red spot where the tick bite occurred. Over the next few days or weeks, the rash gets larger, forming a circular or oval red rash much like a bull’s eye. This rash can stay small or can cover the entire back. But not everyone with Lyme disease gets this rash, and the other symptoms, including fever, headaches, stiff neck, body aches, and fatigue, are common to many other ailments. Some people develop symptoms of arthritis, nervous system problems, or even cardiac issues.

Lyme disease can be difficult to diagnose. Sometimes, people write off their initial symptoms as the flu or another common illness, and experience symptoms for months or even years before finding the true cause. To diagnose Lyme disease, doctors measure the levels of antibodies the body produces in response to Borrelia infection. Lyme patients are treated with antibiotics, but if the bacteria have been in the body for a long period of time, it can take a long time to cure. The sooner diagnosis and treatment begin, the more quickly and completely patients will recover. Even after treatment for Lyme disease, people can still experience muscle or joint aches and nervous system symptoms.

Scientists from Oregon State University have studied 15- to 20-million-year-old amber found in the Dominican Republic. Despite existing for millions of years, bacteria are rarely found in fossils. However, free-flowing tree resin traps and preserves material such as seeds, leaves, feathers, and insects in great detail. Amber is then formed from the fossilization of the resin over millions of years as it turns into a semi-precious stone. This is the oldest fossil evidence of ticks containing such bacteria.

Four ticks from the Dominican amber were examined and found to have large populations of spirochetes that resemble the Borrelia bacteria, such as those that cause Lyme disease today. The oldest reported case of Lyme disease was Oetzi, a well-preserved natural mummy who lived 5,000 years ago and was discovered by hikers in the Alps. In other studies, fossils have revealed bacteria such as Rickettsia, which cause modern diseases like Spotted Fevers and Typhus, found in ticks from about 100 million years ago. Evidence suggests that even dinosaurs may have been infected with Rickettsia, showing these microbes likely infected other creatures before humans were added to the mix. Millions of years of co-evolution resulted in highly adapted pathogens that scientists and physicians still struggle to understand and treat.

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Baby Bacteria

September 26, 2014 by

Sept. 26, 2014

By Medical Discovery News

Fetus in utero

While we know for sure that the bacteria living in and on us are key to our own well-being, more evidence suggests that we acquire our microbiomes before we’re even born. While a baby does acquire bacterial flora from its mother as it moves through the birth canal, scientists now think that our symbiotic, life-long relationships with bacteria begin in utero long before birth. They found bacteria living in the placenta, an organ previously thought to be sterile. They also discovered a baby’s bacteria to be similar to the bacterial flora of the mother’s mouth, making oral hygiene during pregnancy extra important.

An experiment in 2008 by Spanish scientists indicated that bacteria are acquired in some way before birth. They inoculated pregnant mice with labeled bacteria, which were then found in the meconium, the first bowel movement after birth. This was true even when the babies had been delivered by C-section. So scientists knew then that bacteria are acquired before birth and even without the birth canal, changing what we thought we knew about the womb.

Since then, scientists at Baylor College of Medicine have been studying the inside of the womb and birth canal in both humans and animals. They discovered that the vaginal microbiome changed during pregnancy, but it did not resemble that of newborns. So where did they get their bacteria from?

Baylor scientists then examined placentas from 320 women immediately after birth. Using DNA sequencing, they identified the individual types of bacteria each placenta contained. Comparing them to bacteria growing in and on the mothers, they found that the types of bacteria living in the mothers’ mouths most closely resembled those in their own placentas. Interestingly, the bacteria in the placenta consisted of high proportions of bacteria responsible for synthesizing vitamins and other nutrients, which probably benefits a developing fetus and newborn. So a fetus is first exposed to bacteria from the placenta, then at birth additional bacteria are introduced, and then again when babies are exposed bacteria on their parent’s skin, in breast milk, and in their environment.

Other studies have shown the influence of the microbiome on a mother and her baby. In one experiment, monkeys who ate a high-fat diet while pregnant and lactating produced babies with different proportions of bacteria in their guts than those of monkeys fed a normal diet. The short- and long-term consequences of abnormal maternal and infant microbiomes are not yet known, but it’s speculated that these changes could influence the metabolism of the infant and the development of metabolic disorders.

Science is increasingly aware of the role and importance the microbiome has in various parts of the body and the part it plays in human health and disease.

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Putting Your Bacteria to Work

April 4, 2014 by

April 4, 2014

By Medical Discovery News

A biotech startup company called uBiome has adopted the concept of crowd sourcing, using the Internet to rally people around a cause, for research on the human microbiome. The microbiome is all the microscopic flora and fauna that live in and on the human body. Humans have 10 times as many bacterial cells as human cells. But science is just beginning to understand the populations of the microbiome and how they affect a person’s health for good or bad.

What science already knows about the microbiome comes from the $173 million government-funded Human Microbiome Project (HMP). This project took five years and collected and sequenced the microbiome of 250 healthy people. It proved there are at least 1,000 different types of bacteria present on every person. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has made the four terabytes of data from this project available to all researchers via the Microbiome Cloud Project.

Different anatomical sites of the body have different microbial populations. Additionally, the microbial populations that inhabit our bodies vary from person to person, but are very stable within an individual. Each person has their own distinct microbial signature that is unique to them. Most of these microbial species are actually helpful and protect against invading microbes that can cause disease. Some, like certain E. coli in the gut, actually produce essential vitamins that keep us healthy. Alterations in the human microbiome have been associated with diseases like autism, obesity, irritable bowel syndrome, and asthma. In some cases, correcting microbial populations associated with disease states may cure or help manage the disease.

A startup company called uMicrobiome is looking to sequence the microbiomes of at least 1,000 more people from all over the world, and they are trying to find volunteers using crowd sourcing. Anyone interested can go to the company’s Web site (ubiome.com), make a pledge, and request a sampling kit, which contains a swab for gently brushing areas of the ears, mouth, genitalia, or gastrointestinal tract. The swabs are placed into a solution that preserves and stabilizes the bacteria for transport back to the lab.

uMicrobiome examines samples for their 16S RNA sequences. These sequences are present in all microbes, but part of the sequence is unique to each different bacterium. This technology of DNA sequencing can determine the different types of bacteria present and their proportions in each sample.

The company puts the results on their Web site for individuals to access and analyze their microbiome. There are also software tools to help users interpret what they are seeing. uMicrobiome secures the data so that it cannot released in an identifiable form. A person can choose to share their data with other citizen scientists for scientific studies or compare their microbiome to others’.

So science to the citizens has arrived! Anyone can learn about their own microbial world and advance this field of science as well. 

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What’s Lurking in Your Lipstick?

December 14, 2013 by

Dec. 13, 2013

By Medical Discovery News

A New York woman has filed a lawsuit against a cosmetics firm claiming that a sample of lipstick applied by an employee gave her the herpes cold sore virus. Is that even possible?

She claimed that two days after she tried the sample of lipstick her lip began to swell and a physician diagnosed her with a cold sore. She stated that her goal is to force makeup companies to practice better hygiene and use disposable tubes and applicators.

Cold sores are the result of an infection with the herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1). HSV-1 can be transmitted from person to person by kissing, sharing dishes, towels, razors, and other items. It is different from herpes simplex virus type 2, the main cause of genital herpes, which is spread by sexual contact.

There is no cure for a herpes infection. Once someone is infected, the virus invades nerve cells. Even after the cold sore heals, the virus remains in the nerve cells and can lie dormant for any length of time. The virus can be reactivated by exposure to the sun, fever, menstruation, emotional distress, a weakened immune system, an illness, or even space flight. As many as 90 percent of adult Americans have been exposed to HSV-1. For most people, HSV-1 infections are an embarrassing nuisance but not serious. However, HSV-1 infection of the eye is a leading cause of blindness in the United States, causing scarring of the cornea.

The woman suing could have acquired a primary HSV-1 infection from lipstick if a previous customer had an active HSV-1 infection and the lipstick was not properly disinfected or the top layer was not removed between customers. On the other hand, she may have simply reactivated a latent HSV-1 infection that she had been harboring, unrelated to the lipstick. It will be difficult to distinguish where she actually got the infection from.

Sharing makeup of any kind is not a good idea, since people can also be sharing bacteria and viruses. Imagine sharing makeup with thousands of strangers, as happens at makeup counters in stores everywhere. A survey of makeup samples revealed half were contaminated with bacteria such as staphylococcus, micrococcus, pseudomonas and E. coli. On Saturdays, when the stores are most crowded, all of the samples were contaminated with bacteria.

The best solution is to avoid makeup used publically, especially any used around the eyes, nose, or mouth. There are a few precautions that those who insist on trying makeup in stores can use to prevent infections. Don’t use lotion samples that people have put their fingers into; instead use one that can be squeezed out. Ask if individual samples are available for testing. If not, request that the surface of the makeup be cleaned with a tissue, preferably dipped in alcohol, before applying. For lipsticks, scrape off the top layer. Always use disposable applicators or cotton swabs, never communal makeup brushes.

Regardless of whether this woman received her herpes infection from lipstick, it’s important to be cautious about exposing yourself to other people’s microbes. Beware – the price of fleeting beauty may be a permanent infection.

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The Virus in Your Mucus

December 6, 2013 by

Dec. 6, 2013

By Medical Discovery News

Though it has a reputation as slimy and gross, mucus is one of the most valuable lines of defense against the bacteria people are exposed to every day of their lives. It exists not only in a person’s nose, but their respiratory, digestive, urogenital, visual, and auditory systems. Now science shows it contains viruses called bacteriophage (phage for short) that attack and kill bacteria.

A virus is a tiny, infectious agent that is made of a protein coating and a core of genetic information. Although viruses can carry genetic information, undergo mutations, and reproduce, they cannot metabolize on their own and thus are not considered alive. Viruses are classified by the type of genetic information they contain and the shape of their protein capsule. There are viruses that infect every living thing on earth. There are even viruses that infect other viruses. Certain viruses that can infect bacteria have been found in mucus.

A healthy adult produces about one to one and one half liters of mucus per day. Mucus consists of water, salts, antibodies, enzymes, and a family of proteins called mucins. Different mucins are responsible for signaling between cells, forming a chemical barrier for protection, and working with the immune system.

Scientists know that wherever bacteria live, there are also phage viruses that infect them. Areas with mucus have 40 phage for every bacterium, while that ratio is only five to one in areas without mucus. To discover what these phage are doing in the mucus, scientists grew two types of lung tissue in the lab: one that produces mucus and one that cannot. When both lung cultures were exposed to the bacteria E. coli, about half the lung cells died. However, when phage that kill the bacteria were added, the lung cells in the presence of mucus survived. This suggests that the combination of phage and mucus can efficiently kill potentially harmful bacteria. 

The researchers also discovered that the outside of phage is studded with antibody-like proteins that attach the phage to the carbohydrates in the mucus. This would help keep the phage where the bacteria are likely to be. The host may use this system to select which phage are localized to the mucus layers and which can be washed away, explaining why beneficial bacteria are not harmed by phage. An important implication of this system is that it controls the microbial populations in the digestive tract, which play a role in obesity, diabetes, and inflammatory bowel disease.

It all started with investigating how phage actually work in the body, and uncovered the revelation that there are in fact beneficial viruses. In the future, this research could be the foundation for designing phage that reside in mucus and combat specific bacteria, or even change the body’s microbiome. 

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