In an interim analysis of 13 cancer patients whose immunotherapy caused severe colitis, a first-line fecal microbiota transplant eased symptoms in 10 of them within days, and 5 were able to resume immunotherapy. The study is small, uncontrolled, and still recruiting.
A retrospective study of 124 patients treated with fecal microbiota transplantation for C. diff infection found that taking antibiotics for an unrelated reason, either before or after the transplant, roughly tripled the odds of the infection coming back. Overall, three in four patients improved within a week, but the findings point to a concrete step, limiting non essential antibiotics around the time of FMT, that could improve those odds further.
A new mouse study found that daily doses of the probiotic yeast Saccharomyces boulardii cut food intake by about 10% and significantly slowed weight gain in obese mice, alongside coordinated shifts in gut bacteria, gut chemistry, and immune signaling. The effect has only been shown in mice, with no pair-fed control group to rule out that eating less, not the yeast itself, explains the changes.
Researchers at Mayo Clinic, Harvard Medical School, and Colorado State University propose a new framework in Annals of Neurology: the gut wall acts as both a site of immune priming in multiple sclerosis and a direct target of autoimmune attack in related neurological diseases like NMOSD and anti-DPPX encephalitis.
A new Nature Microbiology study in mice finds that a toxin from enterotoxigenic Bacteroides fragilis (ETBF) kills the gut nerve cells that control digestion, causing lasting dysmotility. A second bacterium makes the damage worse, and a Bifidobacterium-based probiotic reversed it in mice.
A new mechanistic study in mice and lab-grown stomach tissue traces the molecular relay, from a bacterial trigger through an immune signal to a hormone-like messenger, that pushes stomach lining cells into an abnormal, embryo-like growth state tied to the earliest steps toward gastric cancer. The work is entirely preclinical, but it identifies specific, potentially druggable switches in that process for the first time.
A four-week randomized trial found a daily low-methoxy pectin supplement improved leg strength, eased anxiety and depression, and shifted gut bacteria in frail and pre-frail older adults, though the inflammatory markers researchers expected to change did not move.
A new mouse study finds that both extreme low-salt and extreme high-salt diets disrupt gut bacteria and impair memory, through different biological routes tied to the gut-brain axis.
A new mouse study finds that Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron needs the dietary sugar fucose to fully protect the liver from alcohol-related damage, acting through a butyrate-AHR-ILC3 immune pathway. Genetic knockouts confirmed each step of the mechanism, but the pathway has not yet been tested in humans.
A new study finds that children with autism and non-autistic children carry similar gut bacteria, but those bacteria produce a chemically different, more inflammatory toxin, one that triggers a stronger reaction in human brain immune cells in lab tests.
