Tag: inflammation

Categories : GastrointestinalTags :

A Fungus in Certain Foods Slows Intestinal Healing

On By ModernMedia

A study has found that a fungus found in certain foods such as cheese and processed meats can cause intestinal injuries in humans and mice with Crohn’s disease to fester and impeding healing.

These findings, from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Cleveland Clinic, suggest that there is potentially a diet-based way to treat Crohn’s disease.

“We’re not suggesting that people stop eating cheese and processed meat; that would be going far beyond what we know right now,” said first author Umang Jain, PhD, an instructor in pathology & immunology at the School of Medicine. “What we know is that this foodborne fungus gets into inflamed, injured tissue and causes harm. We’re planning to perform a larger study in people to figure out if there’s a correlation between diet and the abundance of this fungus in the intestine. If so, it is possible dietary modulation could lower levels of the fungus and thereby reduce symptoms of Crohn’s disease.”

Crohn’s disease is driven by chronic inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract and immunosuppressive medication is the usual treatment. Crohn’s patients endure flare-ups where digestive tracts are dotted with inflamed, open sores that can persist for up to months.

To understand why intestinal ulcers heal so slowly in some people, the researchers studied mice with injured intestines. By sequencing microbial DNA at the site of injury, they discovered that the fungus Debaryomyces hansenii was abundant in wounds but not in uninjured parts of the intestine. D. hansenii can be found in all kinds of cheeses, as well as sausages, beer, wine and other fermented foods.

Introducing D. hansenii into mice with injured intestines slowed down the healing process, and eliminating the fungus with amphotericin B sped it up. In humans, the researchers discovered  D. hansenii in seven out of seven of people with Crohn’s disease, and another analysis of Crohn’s patients found D. hansenii present but only in sites of injury and inflammation. 

“If you look at stool samples from healthy people, this fungus is highly abundant,” Jain said. “It goes into your body and comes out again. But people with Crohn’s disease have a defect in the intestinal barrier that enables the fungus to get into the tissue and survive there. And then it makes itself at home in ulcers and sites of inflammation and prevents those areas from healing.”

Their results suggest that elimination of the fungus could allow wounds to heal normally again, and minimise flare-ups. In mouse studies, amphotericin B eliminated the fungus but it is of limited use in people since it can only be administered intravenously, therefore an oral antifungal is being researched.

“Crohn’s disease is fundamentally an inflammatory disease, so even if we figured out how to improve wound healing, we wouldn’t be curing the disease,” Jain said. “But in people with Crohn’s, impaired wound healing causes a lot of suffering. If we can show that depleting this fungus in people’s bodies—either by dietary changes or with antifungal medications—could improve wound healing, then it may affect the quality of life in ways that we’ve not been able to do with more traditional approaches.”

Source: Medical Xpress

Journal information: U. Jain et al., “Debaryomyces is enriched in Crohn’s disease intestinal tissue and impairs healing in mice,” Science (2021). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi … 1126/science.abd0919

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Inflammatory Foods Raise Cardiovascular Risk

On By ModernMedia

A pair of studies have examined the effect that the dietary inflammatory index has on cardiovascular health, and found that inflammatory foods increase cardiovascular risk.

It is known that inflammatory biomarkers such as interleukins, chemokines and adhesion molecules are associated with atherosclerosis, and proinflammatory foods such as red meats are also associated with cardiovascular risk. The study examined 210 000 participants over 32 years, who filled out a dietary survey every four years, and controlled for variables such as overweight.

“Using an empirically-developed, food-based dietary index to evaluate levels of inflammation associated with dietary intake, we found that dietary patterns with higher inflammatory potential were associated with an increased rate of cardiovascular disease,” said Jun Li, MD, Ph.D., lead author of the study and research scientist in the department of nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Our study is among the first to link a food-based dietary inflammatory index with long-term risk of cardiovascular disease.”

The other study looked at the beneficial effects of walnuts, which have a strong anti-inflammatory effect. Participants who were assigned to eat 30-60gm of walnuts a day showed significantly reduced inflammation in 6 of 10 biomarkers used.

“The anti-inflammatory effect of long-term consumption of walnuts demonstrated in this study provides novel mechanistic insight for the benefit of walnut consumption on heart disease risk beyond that of cholesterol lowering,” said Montserrant Cofán, Ph.D., lead author of the study and a researcher at the August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute in Barcelona, Spain.

Source: Medical Xpress

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Brain Swelling Has an Unexpected Protective Effect

On By ModernMedia

Animal studies have shown that swelling in the brain can protect it in the longer term. Dangerous brain activity can take place after a brain injury (such as from blunt trauma), where neural network activity can surge to dangerous levels, resulting in seizures and tissue injury for months or years after the original injury. Swelling may reduce this long-term effect, an unexpected protective benefit.

At the University of Utah, Punam Sawant-Pokam, PhD, and KC Brennan, MD, investigated the effects of cerebral injury and swelling. They examined the brains of mice subjected to injury with a range of advanced tools for brain recording and electrical activity, 

When observations were made 48 hours after injury, when maximum swelling usually appears, untreated mice brains showed swollen neurons but their neuronal activity had surprisingly dropped. Mice that were given drugs to reduce swelling showed that the neurons continued to show over-activity.

“This data prompts a pretty big reconsideration of how we view edema after brain injury,” Brennan said. “When oedema is about to cause death, it is the number one priority. We’re not saying this is not true. But we’re opening up more nuance to the phenomenon in a way that might allow us to eventually get to more specific treatments and better outcomes.

“It’s very exciting to know that neuronal oedema is not only reducing cellular excitability, it’s also protecting the brain from dangerous network events,” Sawant-Pokam said.

The findings suggest that patients could benefit from more targeted approaches to dealing with cerebral oedema.

Source: Medical Xpress