Microsoft Is Investing Healthcare AI

Inflammatory diseases

Candy, soft drinks, dairy goods, and some types of cereals frequently contain Allura Red, commonly known as FD&C Red 40 and Food Red 17. These items employ this synthetic food colouring to add colour and texture, frequently to appeal to youngsters. Although the usage of these food colours has significantly expanded over the past few decades, nothing is known about how consuming them might influence gut health.

Now, a group of researchers from McMaster University in Canada have shown that chronic ingestion of Allura Red in mice might cause inflammatory 

bowel illnesses (IBDs), which afflict millions of people worldwide. IBDs can be caused by dysregulated immune responses, hereditary factors, and imbalances in the gut microbiota, according to prior studies; however, no research has yet looked into the influence of environmental factors on these medical diseases. .

This study demonstrates that Allura Red has significant detrimental effects on gut health and identifies gut serotonin as a significant mediating factor. Waliul Khan, a professor of pathology and molecular medicine at McMaster University and the study's primary author, said the findings have important implications for the avoidance and management of gut inflammation.

The researchers write, "What we found is shocking and troubling because this common synthetic food colour may be a dietary trigger for IBDs." This study significantly advances public awareness of the possible dangers posed by the food dyes we frequently ingest. The use of Allura Red may affect children's allergies, behavioural problems, immune disorders, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, per the research.

Therefore, the usual Western diet, which contains red and processed meats, sugar, little fibre, and vast amounts of different chemicals and dyes, may serve as a significant environmental trigger for IDBs. There is a need for more experimental, epidemiological, and clinical research on the relationship between commonly used food colours and the emergence of such health problems.

The research is presented in the Nature

In our guts, deadly bacteria have an ally

C. difficile is a bacteria that can potentially result in fatal infections, especially in elderly people and people receiving prolonged antibiotic therapy. These bacteria commonly cause 350,000 instances of infections annually in the United States. Once infected, patients are vulnerable to recurrent infections because of the symptoms of diarrhoea, nausea, and fever.

Researchers from the University of Virginia (UVA) have discovered that some bacteria in our guts, a class of antibiotic-resistant "opportunistic pathogens" known as enterococci, may increase the potency and danger of C. difficile in some individuals.

According to research co-author Jason Papin, a UVA expert in biomedical engineering, "our study made use of the knowledge of a big, multidisciplinary team across numerous institutions to unravel these complicated relationships and find essential pathways that enable C. diff cause disease." We now have the knowledge necessary to create novel therapeutic approaches to combat this serious infection.

The researchers examined how C. difficile interacts with other microbes in the gut using a combination of lab tests and cutting-edge computer modelling after collecting stool samples from a cohort of patients who had C. difficile infections. The analysis showed that enterococci are a dangerous ally of C. diff because they produce amino acids like leucine and ornithine, which make C. diff more dangerous for individuals taking long-term antibiotics. Enterococci are bacteria that, even on their own, can occasionally cause dangerous and challenging to treat infections, such as meningitis, diverticulitis, or urinary tract infections.

Understanding the interactions between this bacterium and enterococci and other gut microorganisms can help doctors better combat this frequent but potentially dangerous infection. The ability of computer models to harness the wealth of data in biology is still in its infancy. The countless prospects to apply data science and computer modelling to advance biological discovery are exciting to us, Papin said.

The work has been released in the Nature journal.