A genomic and metagenomic survey across 45 countries finds that one bacterial lineage, Escherichia marmotae, dominates global carriage of a DNA-damaging toxin gene cluster linked to colorectal tumor growth in lab models; based on the study's abstract only, full text not obtained.
A single-cell atlas of the mouse gut lining, corroborated by biopsies from children, finds that peanut allergy susceptibility tracks with a complete loss of the antimicrobial enzyme lysozyme in Paneth cells, with a plausible gut microbiome mechanism behind it.
Deep genetic sequencing shows the Tsimane of Bolivia and the Hadza of Tanzania still share 1,231 gut microbial species despite tens of thousands of years of separation, with strain-level dating suggesting co-migration with early human populations out of Africa and into the Americas. Most of the shared species are missing from industrialized guts today.
A new study finds that losing a gene called EPS worsens colitis in mice by tipping immune cells toward inflammation and disrupting gut bacteria, and that EPS is also lower in people with active ulcerative colitis.
A review proposes that vitamin D and gut bacteria regulate each other and jointly shape immune balance in thyroid disease, drawing on cohort data from Hashimoto's, Graves', thyroid nodule, and thyroid cancer patients.
A review in Frontiers in Immunology traces how an infant's gut bacteria can shape airway inflammation in childhood asthma, pulling together birth-cohort studies like PASTURE and CHILD with mouse mechanism studies.
A Lancet Microbe perspective argues that most gut microbiome cancer links come from unreliable cross-sectional studies, and calls for more prospective cohorts that bank stool samples years before any cancer diagnosis to finally test causation.
A new Science Advances study found that urolithin A, a postbiotic your gut bacteria make from pomegranate and berry compounds, directly activates a heart-relaxation protein called PKGIα, improving cardiac function in mice with a hard-to-treat form of heart failure and in lab-grown human heart tissue. The findings are preclinical only, and whether your gut even produces urolithin A from pomegranates in the first place depends on which bacteria you host.
A randomized trial that put coffee drinkers through a washout and reintroduction found decaffeinated coffee shifted the same gut bacteria as regular coffee, and even edged it out on memory and sleep measures, though the sample was small and partly coffee-industry funded.
A nationwide cohort study of more than 700,000 South Korean adults found that rosacea and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) each raise the risk of developing the other, the strongest evidence yet for a two-way gut-skin connection, though it stops short of proving causation.
