The educational content in this post, elaborated in collaboration with Lesaffre, was independently developed and approved by the GMFH publishing team and editorial board. How is gut microbiome linked to reproductive tract health? Endometriosis is a common gynecological estrogen-dependent inflammatory disorder that affects approximately 10% of women in reproductive age. It can go unnoticed for several years before the onset of the symptoms, which include impaired reproductive function, psychological changes, and pain in the reproductive system or adjacent to it. For instance, up to 23% of patie ..read more

Your lungs are not sterile and have their own microbiota While we know a lot about the gut and its microbiome, the lung microbiome remains a mystery for most of us. For a long time, scientists believed that the lungs lacked microbial life. In fact, the lung mucosa hosts a variety of bacteria, fungi, and viruses, though fewer in number compared to the gut microbiota. “The respiratory microbiome is perpetually renewed and dynamic due to respiration and mucosal movements,” explained Dr. Gregory Bouchaud, an immunologist at INRAE and expert in the lung microbiome. As it turns out, science is revea ..read more

Canada Dr. Karen Madsen is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Alberta and Director of the Centre of Excellence for Gastrointestinal Inflammation and Immunity Research (CEGIIR). She specializes in studying the gut microbiome’s role in health and disease, focusing on therapies for inflammatory bowel disease and metabolic disorders. Dr. Madsen has published over 150 research papers and received multiple awards for her contributions to medical research and education. You can follow her on X at @madsen_ca. The post Karen Madsen appeared first on Gut Microbiota for Health ..read more

Belgium Professor Amandine Everard is a researcher from the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (FRS-FNRS-WEL Research Institute). She is leading a team at the Louvain Drug Research Institute (LDRI) from the University of Louvain (UCLouvain), Brussels, Belgium. The main topic of interest of her team in research is to study how gut microbes are able to impact eating behaviours. More specifically, she is investigating the interactions between the gut microbiota, the intestine and the brain in the context of obesity and eating disorders. The post Amandine Everard appeared first on Gut Microbiota ..read more

While a disrupted gut microbiome has been linked to an altered function of multiple body systems, little is known about its impact on host reproduction and offspring’s well-being. Now a team of scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Rome, in collaboration with EMBL Heidelberg, has found that disrupting the gut microbiome in male mice changes the testes and sperm, which increases the risk that their offspring are born with low weight, have growth issues, and die prematurely. To explore the connection between the gut microbiome and the reproductive system of male proge ..read more

Why not all gut microbiome research is ready for application Your gut microbiome acts as an organ of the human body responding to diet and environment changes, influencing body functions, and affecting how you respond in a particular way to diet or drugs. Between 2014 and 2024, the number of publications focusing on the gut microbiome in PubMed was 53,450, which represents four-fifths of the total number of publications over the last 40 years that investigated this topic. Some recent and ongoing microbiome initiatives include the Human Microbiome Action and the World Microbiome Partnership, bo ..read more

Emerging evidence shows that our gut’s resident microorganisms are important not only for processing and absorbing dietary nutrients and training our immune system, but also affecting our risk of obesity, dementia, and some gastrointestinal diseases. However, mainstream media and online information on dietary interventions for maintaining a microbiome in good shape is not always supported by sound science and this can have a damaging effect on patients struggling with gastrointestinal conditions1,2. In order to provide easy-to-understand science-based information that can guide you on how to i ..read more

The educational content in this post, elaborated in collaboration with Bromatech, was independently developed and approved by the GMFH publishing team and editorial board. Why oral microbiome matters? When we think about the vast community of bacteria living in our mouths, it’s fascinating to realize that at least 1,000 different species, organized into nine groups, have been identified. Most of these bacteria are harmless and do not typically cause diseases in healthy individuals, but can cause problems in circumstances like illness, medical treatments like chemotherapy, and when the body’s i ..read more

Microbiome-based therapeutics and precision medicine for better health Eran Elinav from the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel) and German Cancer Research Center (Germany) kicked off the conference by highlighting that the current ‘one size fits all’ microbiome treatment approach is outdated and that we should create a new microbiome and clinical data-driven therapeutic ‘toolbox’. The targeted suppression of human gut commensals contributing to non-communicable diseases remains an unmet challenge. Elinav shared first-of-its-kind findings on using an orally administered cocktail of phages to ..read more

Why does the microbiota-gut-brain axis matter? While the existence of a link between the gut and the brain has recently gained growing attention from the media, the concept of the gut-brain axis is not new. In the 19th and 20th centuries, work from different scientists and physicians, such as William Beumont, Charles Darwin, and Claude Bernard linked gut and digestion to emotions. Later on, studies suggested that the huge community of microorganisms living in the gut are important players in the gut-brain axis, which has led to the term ‘microbiota-gut-brain axis1. The microbiota-gut-brain axi ..read more