China researchers link obesity to bacteria

 

December 19th, 2012 in Overweight and Obesity

Chinese researchers have identified a bacteria which may cause obesity, according to a new paper suggesting diets that alter the presence of microbes in humans could combat the condition.

Researchers in Shanghai found that mice bred to be resistant to obesity even when fed high-fat foods became excessively overweight when injected with a kind of human bacteria and subjected to a rich diet.

The bacterium—known as enterobacter—had been linked with obesity after being found in high quantities in the gut of a morbidly obese human volunteer, said the report, written by researchers at Shanghai's Jiaotong University.

The mice were injected with the bacterium for up to 10 weeks as part of the experiment.

The experiments show that the bacterium "may causatively contribute to the development of obesity" in humans, according to the paper published in the peer-reviewed journal of the International Society for Microbial Ecology (ISMEJ).

A human patient lost over 30 kilograms in nine weeks after being placed on a diet of "whole grains, traditional Chinese medicinal foods and prebiotics", which reduced the bacterium's presence in the patient's gut to "undetectable" levels, the paper said.


One of the report's authors, Zhao Liping, lost 20 kilograms in two years after adopting a diet of fermented probiotic foods such as bitter melon to adjust the balance of bacteria in his gut, the American magazine Science said in an article this year on his previous research.

Zhao's work on the role of bacteria in obesity is inspired by traditional Chinese beliefs that the gut is the "foundation for human health", Science reported.

The scientists wrote in their latest paper that they "hope to identify more such obesity-inducing bacteria from various human populations" in future research.

Obesity worldwide has more than doubled since 1980,
 according to the World Health Organisation, with 
more than 500 million adults worldwide suffering from the condition according to 2008 statistics.



(c) 2012 AFP
"China researchers link obesity to bacteria." December 19th, 2012.


Source:
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-china-link-obesity-bacteria.html

China researchers link obesity to bacteria

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*Remember ulcers were discovered to be caused by bacteria after years of other things, like stress, were blamed for causing the condition.

Building human body parts – CNN Photos - CNN.com Blogs

Photography • Research • Seamus Murphy • VII Photo Agency

Seamus Murphy

Seamus Murphy is an Irish photographer represented by VII. 

Building human body parts

Alex Seifalian’s lab at University College London is helping humans who lose body parts to repair their bodies the way a newt would if it lost its tail – by growing another.
The researchers in his lab, which Seifalian calls “the human body parts store,” create the body parts with synthetic materials and a patient’s stem cells.
The lab builds a scaffold of the needed body part with a porous nanocomposite material, developed and patented by the team, and then puts it in a bioreactor with some of the patient’s bone marrow. The patient’s cells cover the scaffold and fill its many holes so that it essentially becomes the patient’s own.
After it is inserted into the patient, it’s absorbed by the body and replaced by new cells over time.
The team has successfully developed a small artery bypass graft and an artificial trachea, or windpipe, both first-evers that are now at work inside patients.
Seifalian’s lab, at UCL’s Department of Nanotechnology and Regenerative Medicine, recently took on a compassionate case of growing a nose for a 56-year-old man who had had his nose removed during cancer treatment. The man had a prosthetic plastic nose attached to glasses that he could wear, but he chose to not go out in public very often.
Earlier in December, after the nose had been forming in a glass jar for about four weeks, the lab-grown nose was implanted under the man’s arm. The patient’s doctor will move it to his face after it further develops under his skin. For the first year, the nostrils will remain sealed to avoid infection.
“You work in a lab all alone, don’t see the future of it,” Seifalian said. “What’s most exciting is that the things we make go to patients.”
Photographer Seamus Murphy visited the lab on assignment with The Daily Mail. The photos accompanied an article profiling the lab and the breakthrough work being done there.
Murphy, who has spent more time in a war zone working as a conflict photographer than shooting scientific research, said taking portraits of the doctors and staff was akin to his work as a documentarian, but the still life aspect of the assignment posed an attractive challenge for him.
“It’s always challenging to take on something requiring solutions - that can be a dilemma with traveling, getting access to somebody important for the story, or in this case, finding ways to represent science,” Murphy wrote in an e-mail interview.
“Often in the course of working I will shoot a detail and try to make it say something compelling with its stillness so it’s not completely alien.”
He said the ear and nose looked eerily believable and even felt real.
“The nose freaked me out more than the ear– I think because of its dimensionality,” he wrote.
Murphy said he never felt queasy, just fascinated and in awe of the work being done in the lab.
– Lauren Russell, CNN

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Building human body parts – CNN Photos - CNN.com Blogs