EXCLUSIVE My autistic daughter couldn't talk until a revolutionary treatment delivered life-changing results
When Jennifer Celeste Briggs gave birth to her daughter Sarah in 2007, she was so small she only fit into clothing made for preemies - but she seemed to be in good health.
By six months, though, Briggs noticed something was 'really different.' Sarah wasn't rolling over, lifting her head, or reaching for toys like other babies her age.
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Daily Mail
32 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE He always got headaches... but this time was different. I was told my son, 8, would die 20 hours later
When Ashlee Dahlberg's eight-year-old son Liam got off the school bus last month and complained of a headache, she thought little of it. Prone to allergies, these were a fairly regular occurrence for her middle child, Ashlee told the Daily Mail, and so she gave him some ibuprofen as usual. Your browser does not support iframes.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
‘Poop transplants' have been happening for decades. Now researchers have identified some unintended consequences
Fecal microbiota transplants are common medical procedures dating back decades that can help restore the gut health of people with colon infections - but scientists now warn of newly discovered consequences from the procedure. The 'poop transplant' is the transfer of the stool of a healthy donor to a recipient. The stool contains beneficial bacteria that can improve the patient's gut bacteria, which guards immune health and helps to regulate metabolism. They are approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat people with common C. diff infections that may cause severe gastrointestinal symptoms and inflammation in hospital patients who have been on antibiotics. Roughly 48,000 procedures are done each year. Now, University of Chicago researchers say a study in mice and experiments with human tissue have revealed some long-lasting and unintended consequences due to transplanting microorganisms from only one section of the digestive tract. 'I think it's a bit of a wakeup call to the field that maybe we shouldn't willy-nilly put large bowel microbes into different parts of the intestine that shouldn't be there,' Dr. Orlando 'Landon' DeLeon, postdoctoral researcher at the university, said in a statement. 'If we're designing good therapeutics, we should be aware of the importance of matching the regional microbiota to their proper environments, so that we provide better overall health benefits.' DeLeon is the lead author of the new research, which was published on Friday in the journal Cell. To reach these conclusions, the authors gave three groups of mice transplants of microorganisms from the middle part of the small intestine that connects to the colon, and a standard fecal transplant from the colon. The test showed that the microorganisms from each transplant were able to colonize the entirety of the intestinal tract in the mice -- not just certain regions. This created what they called regional gut mismatches, lasting for up to three months following a transplant. The microbes also altered their new intestinal environments, 'terraforming' the lining in ways that caused changes in the recipient's metabolism, behavior and energy balance. There were shifts in liver metabolism, including activity in genes associated with immune function. The mice also exhibited different eating behaviors. The gut has several distinct regions with vastly different microbial ecosystems. Imbalances in gut bacteria have been tied to a risk of cancer. 'There are microbes along the entire intestinal tract, and we just study predominately the last third of it (the colon),' DeLeon said. 'So, how can you expect [a transplant], with microbes from a third of the intestinal tract at the end of it, to fix the rest of the intestine?' What this means for human patients may be murky right now, but the authors say more caution is needed with the transplants going forward. They advocate for an approach that would transfer microorganism from all regions of the intestine and not just largely from the colon. In the future, they plan to conduct further study related to how different microbes exert their influence in different parts of the intestine and how the gut regions terraformed by microbiota mismatches can be restored. 'We have absolutely no idea what's in FMT, except that it's a combination of microbes,' Dr. Eugene Chang, the Martin Boyer Professor of Medicine at the university and senior author of the study, said. 'But even a single FMT will cause a change in the host-microbe relationships in these very different regions of the bowel that may be very difficult to reverse.'
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Experts doubt FBI's claim that crop fungus smuggled by Chinese students is a threat
CHICAGO, June 6 (Reuters) - A biological sample that a Chinese researcher was accused of smuggling into the United States and that prosecutors cast as a "dangerous biological pathogen" is a common type of fungus already widespread in U.S. crop fields that likely poses little risk to food safety, experts said. On Tuesday, U.S. federal prosecutors, opens new tab accused two Chinese researchers of smuggling samples of the fungus Fusarium graminearum into the U.S., describing it as a potential agricultural terrorism weapon. Yunqing Jian, 33, a researcher at the University of Michigan's Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology has been charged in connection with allegations that she helped her boyfriend, Zunyong Liu, 34, smuggle the pathogen into the U.S. However, agriculture experts interviewed by Reuters this week said the fungus has been in the U.S. for more than a century, can be prevented by spraying pesticides, and is only dangerous if ingested regularly and in large quantities. "As a weapon, it would be a pretty ineffective one," said Jessica Rutkoski, a crop sciences professor, wheat breeder and geneticist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Rutkoski and other researchers said extensive testing for the fungus' toxin, widespread use of fungicides and the difficulty of intentionally creating an infection with the pathogen would make it a clumsy weapon. The U.S. Attorney's Office and the FBI declined Reuters' request for comment. Since the 1900s, U.S. farmers have been battling the fungus, which causes Fusarium head blight, usually known as "scab," which often infects wheat, barley and other grains on farms during rainy years. The telltale pink streaks on the grain heads contain a toxic byproduct called vomitoxin, which is tested for and tightly controlled by grain elevators where farmers sell their crops. Constant testing and monitoring means that only negligible amounts of vomitoxin ever make it into the bread, pasta and cookies Americans eat, far below levels that would sicken a human, experts said. "We have a long history of managing epidemics of scab," said Andrew Friskop, professor and plant pathologist at North Dakota State University, noting that farmers have access to many tools to prevent and control the disease. Farmers began regularly spraying their fields with fungicide as early as the 1990s, and researchers have since developed multiple strains of fungus-resistant wheat. Plant experts said that it would be difficult to fully assess the risks posed by the samples without more information on the particular strain. But Rutkoski, whose research involves intentionally contaminating wheat with the fungus, said that she isn't always successful at infecting her test field's wheat with scab. She said the pathogen is difficult to control, and her lab has to strike the right balance of temperature and humidity to create an infection. In federal court in Detroit on Tuesday, Jian was charged with conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the U.S., smuggling goods into the U.S., false statements and visa fraud. Jian did not comment on the charges, and the lawyer who represented her in court was not immediately available for comment. Liu could not be immediately reached for comment. The court scheduled Jian's bail hearing for June 13.
