https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacticaseibacillus_casei is another interesting one that got split into a separate genus. No direct action has so far been found for this genus of bacteria, but it makes the GI tract more hospitable for a large number of probiotic species and less hospitable for others like C. difficile, which is one of the nastiest post-antibiotic infections one can get. So nasty it has the French word for “difficult” in its name.
Found in cheddar cheese and yogurt. Any time I have problems or have to take antibiotics I make sure to line up some of both for recovery.
Makes me wonder how much of the positive research on fermented foods generally has to do with liver function improvement, since the organ is crucial to the health of most of the body.
We’ve mostly studied gut health. Something about modern diets is messing that up substantially. Some think it may be Roundup, others dish detergent, others some microbe we can’t culture on Petri dishes.
The incidence of crohn’s, IBD, celiac, etc going on out there. Some people want to throw obesity into that ring as well. Inflammation certainly causes weight gain.
There are so many interesting metabolites that the gut microbiome produces that modulate the immune system. My former startup (Interface Biosciences) was trying to develop a process for identifying and developing these as traditional pharmaceuticals (e.g. small molecule drugs).
One of the big problems with most of these metabolites is that they work better in preventing the emergence of disease pathology than they do in ameliorating it. In other words, they aren't super reverse causal for disease. You'll note that in this study, the design was pretreatment with the beneficial metabolite to prevent injury, rather than rescue once injury occurred ([0], [1]).
It's difficult to make a prophylactic pharmaceutical/intervention - the market is smaller, the therapeutic index must be larger, and the insurance reimbursement is harder to get. I hope that someone smarter can break this open at some point. Natural products are the source of over 50% of approved drugs (though weighted heavily towards antibiotics), and the gut microbiome has really not been explored enough for its natural products.
As a note on the probiotics - be very skeptical of probiotic claims. Even if the microbe actually engrafts in your GI tract (a very big if), the probability that it is producing a given 'good' metabolite is unclear. Microbes have thousands of genes and they are constantly changing metabolism (=the metabolites they excrete) as a function of an innumerable array of factors including: energetic (what food sources are in the GI at that moment?), competitive (what competitor species are they sensing?), immune (what is the host immune state?), and physical (do I sense a high diffusion environment?) factors.
[0] From the abstract: "Here, we report that oral administration of 10-HSA prevented AFB1-induced gut epithelial barrier disruption and preserved mucosal T cell populations.
[1] From the methods: "Mice were randomly assigned into three groups. One group (n = 6) was pretreated with 10-HSA (AstaTech A10837) at 100 mg/kg/day in vehicle for one week and then aflatoxin-β1 (Sigma-Aldrich A6636) dissolved in DMSO (final concentration in water was 0.1%) was added to their drinking water for 21 days at a concentration of 5 mg/L. Another group (n = 6) was pretreated with the vehicle control for 1 week and then aflatoxin-β1 was added to their drinking water for 21 days at a concentration of 5 mg/L. The third group (n = 4) served as the negative control group and received vehicle for 1 week prior to DMSO addition to drinking water for 21 days.
yeah Davis is agriculturally oriented. Because this microbe grows in cows stomachs it is added to silage (feed) - so dairy products have this metabolite.
Amazing finding. The statistics on liver damage from aflatoxins said to affect potentially 5 billion people. And of course in the US, with its high incidence of obesity has liver issues due to NAFLD. Then of course the heavy drinkers are all at risk.
It seems that the powers that be decided lactobacillus was getting a bit crowded and decided to split it into separate genuses.
From the article we are talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactiplantibacillus_plantarum and it’s apparently the most common fermenting bacteria for silage, and shows up in sauerkraut and kimchi.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacticaseibacillus_casei is another interesting one that got split into a separate genus. No direct action has so far been found for this genus of bacteria, but it makes the GI tract more hospitable for a large number of probiotic species and less hospitable for others like C. difficile, which is one of the nastiest post-antibiotic infections one can get. So nasty it has the French word for “difficult” in its name.
Found in cheddar cheese and yogurt. Any time I have problems or have to take antibiotics I make sure to line up some of both for recovery.
Makes me wonder how much of the positive research on fermented foods generally has to do with liver function improvement, since the organ is crucial to the health of most of the body.
Koreans live off of fermented kimchi, something like 80+ pounds per person every year. Do Koreans have lower incidence of gut complications?
I bet they've got lower rates of hep than America, but that probably doesn't have anything to do with the kimchi.
We’ve mostly studied gut health. Something about modern diets is messing that up substantially. Some think it may be Roundup, others dish detergent, others some microbe we can’t culture on Petri dishes.
What's the evidence that modern diets are substantially messing up gut health? (just curious, not (necessarily;) sceptical)
The incidence of crohn’s, IBD, celiac, etc going on out there. Some people want to throw obesity into that ring as well. Inflammation certainly causes weight gain.
There are so many interesting metabolites that the gut microbiome produces that modulate the immune system. My former startup (Interface Biosciences) was trying to develop a process for identifying and developing these as traditional pharmaceuticals (e.g. small molecule drugs).
One of the big problems with most of these metabolites is that they work better in preventing the emergence of disease pathology than they do in ameliorating it. In other words, they aren't super reverse causal for disease. You'll note that in this study, the design was pretreatment with the beneficial metabolite to prevent injury, rather than rescue once injury occurred ([0], [1]).
It's difficult to make a prophylactic pharmaceutical/intervention - the market is smaller, the therapeutic index must be larger, and the insurance reimbursement is harder to get. I hope that someone smarter can break this open at some point. Natural products are the source of over 50% of approved drugs (though weighted heavily towards antibiotics), and the gut microbiome has really not been explored enough for its natural products.
As a note on the probiotics - be very skeptical of probiotic claims. Even if the microbe actually engrafts in your GI tract (a very big if), the probability that it is producing a given 'good' metabolite is unclear. Microbes have thousands of genes and they are constantly changing metabolism (=the metabolites they excrete) as a function of an innumerable array of factors including: energetic (what food sources are in the GI at that moment?), competitive (what competitor species are they sensing?), immune (what is the host immune state?), and physical (do I sense a high diffusion environment?) factors.
[0] From the abstract: "Here, we report that oral administration of 10-HSA prevented AFB1-induced gut epithelial barrier disruption and preserved mucosal T cell populations.
[1] From the methods: "Mice were randomly assigned into three groups. One group (n = 6) was pretreated with 10-HSA (AstaTech A10837) at 100 mg/kg/day in vehicle for one week and then aflatoxin-β1 (Sigma-Aldrich A6636) dissolved in DMSO (final concentration in water was 0.1%) was added to their drinking water for 21 days at a concentration of 5 mg/L. Another group (n = 6) was pretreated with the vehicle control for 1 week and then aflatoxin-β1 was added to their drinking water for 21 days at a concentration of 5 mg/L. The third group (n = 4) served as the negative control group and received vehicle for 1 week prior to DMSO addition to drinking water for 21 days.
I'll drink to that!
kefir has that microbe. So drink some kefir
and eat a kraut dog. Or a Ruben. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactiplantibacillus_plantaru...
Supported by grants from NIH/NIAID Grants and the University of California Davis.
yeah Davis is agriculturally oriented. Because this microbe grows in cows stomachs it is added to silage (feed) - so dairy products have this metabolite.
Amazing finding. The statistics on liver damage from aflatoxins said to affect potentially 5 billion people. And of course in the US, with its high incidence of obesity has liver issues due to NAFLD. Then of course the heavy drinkers are all at risk.
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-appr...
10-HSA is a fatty-acid metabolite produced by Lactobacillus bacteria
Lactobacillus Plantarum is a super common probiotic that produces 10-HSA and other important metabolites
its commercial name is also known as lp299v which has been studied for decades, tons of studies
for example: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4344/10/2/154
lp299v is extreme safe and can be taken in mega-doses however it will not colonize in the GI so would have to be taken routinely
Wouldn’t it be easier to just take a gram of the metabolite itself vs hoping for long term colonization?