A gut microbe called Turicibacter reduces weight gain and lowers blood sugar and levels of fat in the blood in mice. If the results apply in humans, Turicibacter-derived compounds could be effective therapeutics to promote metabolic health and healthy weight.

A new high-throughput study using preexisting publicly available data shows that E. coli proteins containing a specific structure, called a non-covalent lasso entanglement, are more likely to misfold and, if they are required the bacteria’s survival, more likely to be repaired.

In a recent study, Medical University of South Carolina researchers compared two ways to help kids to get effective trauma therapy: training therapists vs. training therapists plus child protective services’ workers, juvenile justice professionals, school guidance counselors and others to spot struggling kids and refer them. Both approaches reduced kids’ posttraumatic stress and depression. The second method identified more kids who had experienced trauma and needed help and increased the number who finished treatment.

Bacteria may be the next frontier in cancer treatment, according to a team led by researchers at Penn State that devised a new approach of creating bacteria-derived mixtures — or cocktails — to help fight bladder cancer. They tested their mixtures of good and bad bacteria on patient tumor samples and in mice, finding that the cocktails significantly boost the immune system’s ability to fight cancer. 

Three recently published studies by Medical University of South Carolina researchers each adopted a unique approach to improving our understanding of hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), one taking a clinical, one a genetic and the most recent a proteomics approach. All three studies suggested a potential immune component for the disease, challenging long-held assumptions that hEDS is primarily a connective tissue disease. This new conceptualization of the disease better reflects the lived experience of patients.