Western diets that are high in sugars, fats, and processed foods have been linked to a wide variety of health ailments. Now, researchers have determined that Western diets can also disrupt the crucial barrier in the gastrointestinal tract known as the gut mucosa. This disruption can raise an individual’s risk of inflammation and infectious disease. Scientists have also identified a gut microbe called Blautia that has an important role in shielding the gut mucosa. The findings have been reported in Nature Communications.
“Our results contribute to an increased understanding of how the intestinal bacteria and the mucus layer work together, which may eventually lead to new treatment strategies for diseases linked to the Western diet such as the inflammatory bowel disease ulcerative colitis,” said first study author Sandra Holmberg, a graduate student at Umeå University.
AbstractThis talk will delve into the intricate web of space radiation, focusing on its three primary components – galactic cosmic rays, solar energetic part…
Working To Reduce Global Catastrophic Biological Risks — Dr. Jaime Yassif, Ph.D. — VP, Global Biological Policy and Programs, Nuclear Threat Initiative.
Dr. Jaime Yassif, Ph.D. serves as Vice President of Global Biological Policy and Programs, at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (https://www.nti.org/about/people/jaim…) where she oversees work to reduce global catastrophic biological risks, strengthen biosecurity and pandemic preparedness, and drives progress in advancing global health security.
Prior to this, Dr. Yassif served as a Program Officer at the Open Philanthropy Project, where she led the initiative on Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness. In this role, she recommended and managed approximately $40 million in biosecurity grants, which rebuilt the field and supported work in several key areas, including: development of new biosecurity programming at several leading think tanks; cultivation of new talent through biosecurity leadership development programs; initiation of new biosecurity work in China and India; establishment of the Global Health Security Index; development of the Clade X tabletop exercise; and the emergence of a new discussion about global catastrophic biological risks.
Previously, Dr. Yassif was a Science and Technology Policy Advisor at the U.S. Department of Defense, where she focused on oversight of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and East Asia security issues. During this period, she also worked on the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) at the Department of Health and Human Services, where she helped lay the groundwork for the WHO Joint External Evaluations and the GHSA Steering Group.
Dr. Yassif’s previous experience includes work with Connecting Organizations for Regional Disease Surveillance, Chatham House, NTI, the Federation of American Scientists and the Tsinghua University Institute for International Studies.
Most antibiotics target metabolically active bacteria, but with artificial intelligence, researchers can efficiently screen compounds that are lethal to dormant microbes.
Since the 1970s, modern antibiotic discovery has been experiencing a lull. Now the World Health Organization has declared the antimicrobial resistance crisis as one of the top 10 global public health threats.
When an infection is treated repeatedly, clinicians run the risk of bacteria becoming resistant to the antibiotics. But why would an infection return after proper antibiotic treatment? One well-documented possibility is that the bacteria are becoming metabolically inert, escaping detection of traditional antibiotics that only respond to metabolic activity. When the danger has passed, the bacteria return to life and the infection reappears.
A study in Nature identifies molecular responses to endurance exercise training in rats, including sex-specific responses. The findings may offer new insights into the impact of exercise on health and disease. Read the paper:
Temporal multi-omic analysis of tissues from rats undergoing up to eight weeks of endurance exercise training reveals widespread shared, tissue-specific and sex-specific changes, including immune, metabolic, stress response and mitochondrial pathways.
As the US grapples with an ongoing bird flu outbreak in dairy cattle, the country’s health agencies are ramping up surveillance efforts and working to develop a vaccine if needed.
A new study co-authored by Yale sociologist Nicholas A. Christakis demonstrates that tapping into the dynamics of friendship significantly improves the possibility that a community will adopt public health and other interventions aimed at improved human well-being.
What if changes in a person’s stress levels could be detected while they sleep using wearable devices? A new study by University of Vermont researchers published in PLOS Digital Health is the first to find changes in perceived stress levels reflected in sleep data—an important step towards identifying biomarkers that may help flag individuals in need of support.
Given how critical sleep is to physical and mental health, the research team suspected signals might exist in sleep data, says Laura Bloomfield, a research assistant professor of mathematics and statistics and lead author of the study. “Changes in stress are visible.”
When parsing baseline sleep data, the researchers found “consistent associations” between people’s perceived stress scores and factors such as total sleep time, resting heart rate and heart rate variability, and respiratory rate.
