https://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Select gut bacteria protect mice against post-influenza virus secondary bacterial pneumonia, according to a study published by researchers in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-gut-bacteria-mice-influenza-bacterial.html Mon, 12 Jan 2026 17:20:02 EST news687459966 Scientists at ARUP Laboratories have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that detects intestinal parasites in stool samples more quickly and accurately than traditional methods, potentially transforming how labs diagnose parasitic infections around the world. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-10-ai-tool-humans-parasites-stool.html Thu, 23 Oct 2025 04:58:04 EDT news680414281 Non-antibiotic drugs can alter the microbiome and increase the risk of gut infections in surprising ways, a new Nature study shows. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-08-antibiotic-drugs-disrupt-microbiome.html Wed, 06 Aug 2025 09:46:05 EDT news673692361 Thanks to lab-grown miniature intestines, researchers at Uppsala University have successfully mapped how aggressive Shigella bacteria infect the human gut. The study opens the door to using cultured human mini-organs to investigate a wide range of other serious infections. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-06-lab-grown-mini-intestines-shigella.html Thu, 12 Jun 2025 08:58:03 EDT news668937481 A team of scientists at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Center (The Institute) has made a landmark discovery that sheds light on how the immune system protects the gut during infection. By studying intestinal worms—also known as helminths—the team, led by Professor Irah King, uncovered a previously unknown immune mechanism that preserves intestinal function in the presence of persistent infection. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-05-uncover-immune-mechanism-intestine.html Thu, 29 May 2025 12:34:05 EDT news667740841 A study published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe by Brazilian and American researchers suggests that a diet rich in soluble fiber can protect the intestine against pathogenic bacteria. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-04-fiber-consumption-gut-bacterial-infection.html Wed, 09 Apr 2025 15:14:04 EDT news663430441 A study led by David Sancho at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) in Madrid reveals how an increase in intestinal permeability allows the natural gut bacteria to cross the intestinal barrier and reach the bone marrow, where they induce epigenetic changes—modifications that alter gene activity without affecting DNA sequence—in the stem cells that give rise to immune cells. The epigenetic changes induced by the translocated gut bacteria generate "trained" immune cells primed to respond more efficiently to future infections. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-01-scientists-gut-modulates-inflammatory-conditions.html Wed, 22 Jan 2025 12:33:04 EST news656771581 Intestinal infections can change the composition of liver bile, leading to changes in immune function and gut bacteria, potentially helping fight off harmful bacteria https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-11-intestinal-infections-bile-composition-immune.html Tue, 26 Nov 2024 14:41:03 EST news651854462 A study reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows how the presence of a specific protein called IL-22BP affects the composition of the gut microbiota and the body's response to bacterial infection. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-07-protein-affects-health-gut-microbiota.html Mon, 29 Jul 2024 16:13:24 EDT news641488398 Independent US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr's health is in the spotlight again—this time relating to a neurological issue. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-05-worm-robert-kennedy-jr-brain.html Mon, 13 May 2024 12:55:25 EDT news634823719 A study led by University of Queensland researchers has identified the main types of E. coli bacteria that cause neonatal meningitis, and revealed why some infections recur despite being treated with antibiotics. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-04-bacteria-meningitis-babies.html Tue, 16 Apr 2024 15:29:10 EDT news632500148 The Wistar Institute's associate professor Mohamed Abdel-Mohsen, Ph.D., has demonstrated, with his lab and collaborators, a connection between viral damage to the gut and premature biological aging. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-02-scientists-link-leaky-gut-biological.html Thu, 22 Feb 2024 12:40:04 EST news627828002 The composition of microbiota found in the gut influences how susceptible mice are to respiratory virus infections and the severity of these infections, according to researchers from the Center for Translational Antiviral Research in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-01-gut-microbiota-severity-respiratory-viral.html Tue, 30 Jan 2024 11:00:01 EST news625828904 Rotavirus causes gastroenteritis, a condition that includes diarrhea, deficient nutrient absorption and weight loss. Severe cases result in approximately 128,000 deaths annually in infants and children worldwide. Despite intense research on how rotavirus causes diarrhea, there is still no complete answer, but in this new study researchers at Baylor College of Medicine report a new mechanism by which rotavirus induces diarrhea, interfering with the normal absorption of nutrients in the intestine. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-12-mechanism-rotavirus-sick.html Mon, 11 Dec 2023 15:00:01 EST news621508939 Viral gastroenteritis is an intestinal infection marked by watery diarrhea, abdominal cramps, nausea or vomiting, headache, muscle aches and sometimes fever. It's often called a stomach bug or the stomach flu, but it's not actually the flu or influenza, which is a respiratory illness. This infection often develops though contact with an infected person or by ingesting contaminated food or water. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-11-foods-stomach-bug.html Thu, 30 Nov 2023 12:50:01 EST news620568546 IBD is an umbrella term for chronic inflammatory bowel diseases, with a population prevalence of around 0.5%. The main types of IBD are ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. Unlike irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), IBD results in visible damage to the intestinal mucous membrane. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-11-infection-low-active-ibd.html Wed, 01 Nov 2023 12:22:03 EDT news618060121 Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) intestinal infections can cause severe, debilitating diarrhea in patients who are hospitalized or on immunosuppressive therapies. The infections can be very hard to eradicate, roaring back when patients try to taper their antibiotics. Many people wind up on antibiotics for months and can become resistant to three or more of them. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-10-mice-curbing-intestinal-inflammation-combat.html Thu, 26 Oct 2023 13:02:03 EDT news617544121 Located in the mucus layer that lines the gastrointestinal tract, mucins—proteins with attached sugar molecules—play a key role in combating bacterial infection and providing a safe haven to friendly gut bacteria through unknown mechanisms. Although mucin dysregulation leads to metabolic disease and intestinal inflammation, the associated mechanism remains largely unknown. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-10-links-intestinal-glycan-modifications-obesity.html Wed, 11 Oct 2023 16:05:36 EDT news616259133 The immune system protects the body from invaders, such as bacteria, viruses, or tumors, with its intricate network of proteins, cells, and organs. Specialized immune cells, called cytotoxic T cells, can develop into short-lived effector cells that kill infected or cancerous cells within our bodies. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-06-infection-fighting-immune-cells.html Tue, 13 Jun 2023 11:41:03 EDT news605875261 Intestinal infections take a heavy toll on impoverished Black communities that have out-of-date sewage systems. These infections often spread through contaminated soil and water and are among the most common diseases worldwide. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-05-parasitic-infections-health-low-income-black.html Mon, 22 May 2023 11:50:02 EDT news603972931 The pork tapeworm (Taenia solium) can grow to be more than 20 feet long inside the human intestine, where it attaches to the intestinal wall using the 4 suckers on its scolex, which is only 1 millimeter in diameter. The scolex looks somewhat like a head, but the organism has no mouth or digestive tract and simply absorbs nutrients through its body covering. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-05-neurocysticercosis.html Fri, 05 May 2023 09:35:55 EDT news602498151 COVID-19 is associated with an increased risk of developing long-term gastrointestinal disorders, including irritable bowel syndrome. This is what has been shown by a research published in the journal Gut, carried out by scholars of the University of Bologna and the IRCCS AOU S.Orsola Bologna. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-03-covid-gastrointestinal-disorders.html Mon, 20 Mar 2023 15:55:03 EDT news598546501 Brigham researchers studying how and why certain cell types proliferate in the gut found that xanthine, which is found in coffee, tea and chocolate, may play a role in Th17 differentiation. Insights may help investigators better understand gut health and the development of conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-03-molecular-component-caffeine-play-role.html Tue, 14 Mar 2023 15:06:03 EDT news598025161 Scientists have discovered that a high-fat diet allows the immune system to eliminate a parasitic worm which is a major cause of death and illness in the developing world. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-02-high-fat-diet-expulsion-intestinal.html Mon, 06 Feb 2023 13:27:40 EST news594912447 A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Immunobiology and Epigenetics, working with colleagues from the Washington University School of Medicine, the Medical University of Vienna, the Van Andel Research Institute and the USDA has found that fatty tissue surrounding the intestinal tracts of mice help to eject gut-infesting worms. Their paper is published in the journal Science Immunology. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-10-fatty-tissue-intestinal-tracts-mice.html Mon, 17 Oct 2022 11:40:01 EDT news585222497 A new study led by Marc Veldhoen, group leader at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular João Lobo Antunes (iMM; Portugal) and Associate Professor at Faculdade de Medicina de Lisboa (FMUL) and published today in the scientific journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) discovered that white blood cells that reside in the intestines, a specific group of immune cells called tissue resident lymphocytes, use sugar as an energy source and have a faster metabolism than lymphocytes that circulate in the blood. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-08-immune-cells-intestine-sweet-tooth.html Mon, 15 Aug 2022 15:00:01 EDT news579775360 COVID-19 is mainly known as a respiratory ailment, but a new study suggests the coronavirus can infect your intestinal tract for weeks and months after you've cleared the bug from your lungs. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-04-coronavirus-human-feces-months-infection.html Mon, 18 Apr 2022 10:29:04 EDT news569496538 Intestinal epithelial cells line the inner wall of the gut, creating a barrier to dangerous bacteria like enteropathogenic E. coli that seek to attach and efface that barrier, causing diarrhea. Such pathogens pose significant risks to human health and cause infant death in developing countries. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-04-cell-derived-interleukin-antibacterial-defense-colonic.html Fri, 08 Apr 2022 10:30:19 EDT news568632613 Most of us are familiar with COVID-19's hallmark symptoms of a loss of taste or smell and difficulty breathing, but a full 60% of patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 also report gastrointestinal symptoms (GI) such as nausea, diarrhea, and stomach pain. Infection of the gut, which expresses high levels of the ACE2 receptor protein that SARS-CoV-2 uses to enter cells, is correlated with more severe cases of COVID-19, but the exact interactions between the virus and intestinal tissue is difficult to study in human patients. Animal models, while useful, do not fully reflect how human organs react to infection by pathogens, further limiting our current understanding of how coronaviruses like SARS-CoV-2 affect the gut. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-11-tool-covid-impact-gut-health.html Mon, 08 Nov 2021 12:17:30 EST news555596245 Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have uncovered a more detailed picture of how the intestinal epithelium—the lining of the intestines—heals itself after infection with rotavirus. A meticulous single-cell analytical approach to study the repair process in an animal model revealed that the damaged epithelium contains a variety of cell types involved in repairing it through broad coordinated responses that ultimately heal the damaged tissue. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-11-cellular-teamwork-intestine.html Wed, 03 Nov 2021 18:09:04 EDT news555181735