all gastroenterology stories

Saving your self from yourself

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 12:09:08 -0400

"Your gut is a complicated place," notes Shannon Turley, an assistant professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School. In addition to processing food three or more times a day, an intestine needs to protect you from being damaged by yourself.

For the food-processing task, your gut carries a small army of bacteria that turn steak and potatoes into tiny molecules your blood and gut can handle. But it also is continually tested with course after course of potentially dangerous molecules that cause a variety of ailments like inflammatory bowel disease. Turley and her colleagues are trying to find out how the gut manages to destroy these toxic molecules without harming "self," normal tissues and organs, or the good bacteria that feed them.

Simple tools can reduce transmission

50443248 — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 16:42:50 -0400

Viral upper respiratory and gastrointestinal infections are the two most common illnesses that occur in children enrolled in day care, and secondary attack rates within families can be as high as 27 percent for respiratory illnesses and 70 percent for gastroenteritis.
New research published in the April issue of Pediatrics shows that in homes with children enrolled in day care, several misconceptions regarding illness transmission may be contributing to the spread of these diseases.

Cystic fibrosis gene linked to fatty acid defects

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 07:10:29 -0400

Researchers already understood that the defective CFTR gene causes CF, explains senior author Steven D. Freedman, M.D., Ph.D., of the gastroenterology division at BIDMC and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "But we didn't understand how this defective gene leads to the symptoms of the disease. This new study sheds light on what may be happening and provides a link between CFTR function and fatty acid metabolism."

Certain fatty acids, such as AA and DHA acid, are important in controlling a variety of biologic functions, including inflammatory responses. In the study, the researchers examined tissue samples of 38 CF patients to determine if they exhibited an imbalance of the same fatty acids as mice had in earlier studies. As predicted, the results showed that there were abnormally high levels of AA acid and abnormally low levels of DHA acid.

Testing also revealed that parents of CF patients had fatty acid levels halfway between those of the CF patients and those of unaffected subjects. According to Brian P. O'sullivan, M.D., who led the research at UMass Memorial Medical Center, this reinforces the hypothesis that "a fatty acid defect is a basic problem in CF and not just a reflection of a disease state."