A synbiotic built from a Colombian cheese probiotic reshaped gut bacteria in mice carrying human ASD-linked microbiota, improving sociability and marble-burying behavior after 21 days, but the study was conducted entirely in mice with a small, unbalanced donor pool.
A new mouse study traces how a licorice-derived compound slows colorectal cancer growth: by remodeling gut bacteria to produce more short-chain fatty acids, which in turn shut down a cancer-promoting enzyme called IDO1.
A new mouse study finds that diet can triple survival in a model of Hirschsprung disease, apparently by reshaping gut bacteria and boosting a byproduct called butyrate. Researchers call it the first evidence diet might help prevent the disease's deadliest complication.
Transplanting gut bacteria from children with autism into mice triggered autism-like behavior and rewired phosphorylation switches on brain proteins, including SHANK3 - a change AI structure modeling predicts weakens a key synaptic bond. One related protein, FNDC3A, was also elevated in the children's own blood, the only part of the mechanism confirmed in humans so far.
A mouse study found that a probiotic fermented milk reduced amyloid plaque and improved spatial memory in an Alzheimer's model, alongside calmer brain inflammation and shifts in gut bacteria. The effect was strongest in the brain's cortex, not the memory-critical hippocampus, and the findings are preclinical, not yet tested in people.
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 mouse study identifies a gut enzyme, neutral ceramidase, that reshapes gut bacteria and a bacterial byproduct to weaken the intestinal barrier and worsen liver scarring in MASH. Deleting the enzyme reversed much of the damage without changing liver fat, pointing to a targeted pathway - though so far only in mice.
Children with autism have a weakened gut-bacterial pathway for making a calming tryptophan byproduct. Restoring it in autism-model mice improved social behavior and repaired brain synapses, with causal tests pinning the effect to one brain receptor, though the proof so far is in mice, not people.
If you've ever suspected that a short walk gets things moving, early research now suggests you may be biologically right, and faster than you'd expect.
A controlled mouse study finds that circadian rhythm disruption worsens high-fat-diet-induced fatty liver disease through gut microbiota changes, and shows a fecal microbiota transplant can partly, but not fully, reverse the damage.
