Microbiome Research
Human microbiome research, the study of the microbial communities (including fungi, bacteria and viruses) that inhabit the human body, is a rapidly growing field of research that has led to a greater understanding of the complex interactions between the human body and the microorganisms that inhabit it.
Microbiome research has increased dramatically in recent years, driven by advances in technology and significant reductions in the cost of analysis. Research has unlocked a wealth of data, leading to the discovery of previously unknown interactions and effects, with the potential to lead to new diagnostic techniques and interventional strategies. Limitations remain including the high levels of noise in the samples, lack of unique connections between biological interpretations and experimental observations and unreliable comparisons across samples. But the potential for microbiome-based therapies, diagnostics and dietary modifications is increasingly gaining attention.
Here is a list of past articles from Aurametrix blogs related to microbiome:
December 20, 2022: Current Trends in Deodorization Using microbiome to create personalized cosmetic products
December 16, 2022: Oral manifestations after COVID-19 vaccination Vaccination can cause various oral lesions and change microbial composition. Increased diversity is not always beneficial.
December 15, 2022: Keratoacanthomas Following COVID-19 Vaccination Genetics and skin microbiota (especially, Staphylococcus aureus) may play a factor in keratoacanthomas but genetic variants (some likely in DNA repair genes) are unknown. A case of post-vaccination eruption of multiple keratoacanthomas is presented.
November 30, 2022: The Health Benefits of Mung Beans Mung Bean Seed Extracts regulate the composition of gut microbiota by stimulating the growth of the beneficial bacteria Enterococcus, Ruminococcus, Blautia, and Bacteroides and decreasing the growth of the potential pathogenic bacteria Escherichia-Shigella.
November 17, 2022: Olfactory Signatures and COVID-19 A new peer-reviewed paper compared sufferers of microbiome-related disorders to general populations in respect to their response to COVID-19 vaccines and SARS-Co-V2 infections.
November 16, 2022: Rapidly progressing dementia after vaccination Evidence indicates that Borrelia sp., HSV-1, VZV (HHV-2), HHV-6/7, oral pathogens, Chlamydophila pneumoniae, and Candida albicans can infect the central nervous system. The gastrointestinal tract microbiota are directly linked to dementia pathogenesis through triggering metabolic diseases and low-grade inflammation progress. This report describes a previously healthy woman in her 60s who developed behavioral problems and anorexia.
November 4, 2022: The Incidence and Effect of Adverse Events Due to COVID-19 Vaccines on Breakthrough Infections: Decentralized Observational Study With Underrepresented Groups The findings of this peer-reviewed research indicate that human microbiome may be responsible for certain vaccine adverse reactions.
October 28, 2022: Fatal Myocarditis after Vaccination Thousands of case reports of myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination have been published in medical literature. Some of them were fatal. The most common bacterial cause of myocarditis is Staphylococcus aureus. Other microbes in the human gut - such as Campylobacter jejuni enteritis, Rickettsia rickettsii, R. conorii, Orientia tsutsugamushi, Coxiella burnetii, Anaplasma phagocytophila, and Bartonella henselae have been also associated with myocarditis.
October 27, 2022: Vulvar ulcers after COVID-19 vaccination Multiple vaccine-triggered cases have been reported in medical literature. Vulvar ulcers have been associated with Epstein–Barr virus, Mycoplasma pneumoniae and other microbes. The vulvar microbiome represents a promising field for exploring potential links for disease etiology and targets for therapy
October 13, 2022: Rapid Progression of Prediabetes to Diabetes after Vaccination A 69-year-old male with a past medical history of hypertension and prediabetes presents with blurry vision, tachycardia, tachypnea, loss of taste and smell, develops ketosis prone symptomatic Diabetis Melitus soon after the 3rd booster dose. Several microbes - such as rubella - have been strongly associated with increased disease susceptibility. Different strains of enteroviruses, human cytomegalovirus, and rotavirus have been suggested to be diabetogenic in susceptible individuals. A newly emerged hypothesis states that a bacterial toxin, bafilomycin A1 produced by Streptomyces spp, could be the cause of pancreatic beta-cell damage. In some instances, however, microbial infections may even protect the individual from type 1 diabetes.
September 30, 2022: Vaccine-induced-pericarditis after COVID-induced myocarditis Previous myocarditis is not an absolute contraindication to vaccination, but clinicians must assess individual risk factors before counseling further doses.
September 29, 2022: Total hair loss after vaccination Many cases of males and females between the ages of 15 and 80 losing hair after COVID-19 vaccines were reported in the literature.
September 24, 2022: Breakthrough long COVID in a patient with rheumatoid arthritis 37-year-old woman experienced persistent headache and fatigue for over 6 weeks after SARS-CoV-2 infection and continued to test positive for 14 weeks post-infection despite no new exposures.
September 21, 2022: Designing food environment to improve behavior Personalized combination of interventions, individual psychology and activity environment along with a better integration of human element are needed for designing successful digital interventions to improve health-related behavior.
September 19, 2022: Vaccine-induced interstitial lung disease Autoimmune interstitial lung disease is associated with both increased reactogenicity and impaired immunogenicity to COVID-19 vaccines
September 18, 2022: COVID-19 vaccine-associated myositis Autoimmunity associated with vaccines may be related to specific HLA phenotypes, but the exact underlying mechanisms remain unclear.
September 17, 2022: The rapid expansion of DTC Healthcare More people are using virtual healthcare and embracing technology to monitor their health (including the microbiome), measure fitness, and order medicines.
September 15, 2022: Bipolar disorder after COVID-19 Mental health conditions are among the growing list of symptoms associated with post-COVID health issues. Presented case describes a 55-year-old patient with no previous mental illness who developed full-blown manic symptoms following a severe course of COVID-19.
September 7, 2022: Pediatric myocarditis after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination in Japan The proportion of individuals with myocarditis that visited a hospital in Japan was estimated to be 0.022% - remarkably higher than previously reported. Our study showed that the number is much higher since many individuals never officially consulted a medical professional.
September 3, 2022: Psychosis following COVID-19 COVID-19 vaccination Psychiatric side effects associated with vaccines are possible.
August 30, 2022: Spike protein in the skin after COVID-19 vaccination BNT162b2 vaccine reactivates Varicella Zoster, herpetic vasculitis skin lesions contain spike protein.
August 23, 2022: Vaccine-related pneumonitis COVID-19 vaccine-related pneumonitis (CV-P) should be considered in patients with atypical lung infiltration, no specific etiologies, and recent COVID-19 vaccination.
August 22, 2022: COVID-19 Vaccine reactogenicity and breakthrough infections: decentralized participatory study A decentralized longitudinal study bridging digital divide identifies previously unreported patterns.
August 20, 2022: Idiopathic nephrotic syndrome relapse following SARS-CoV-2 vaccination COVID-19 vaccine may cause relapse of kidney disorders.
August 15, 2022: T-cell lymphoma after COVID-19 vaccination Reappearance of pre-existing cancers post COVID-19 vaccination was described in medical literature. A new publication reports a new-onset subcutaneous lymphoma in a young individual.
August 8, 2022: Minimal change disease after COVID-19 vaccination There have been a small but increasing number of cases of new-onset and relapse of glomerular diseases reported to have occurred in temporal association with the COVID-19 vaccines.
August 6, 2022: Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada syndrome Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada (VKH) syndrome is an autoimmune, multi-systemic disease which can occur due to viral infection or vaccination. Several cases have been documented after COVID-19 vaccines.
August 3, 2022: Thyroiditis after COVID-19 mRNA vaccines Subacute thyroiditis (SAT) is a thyroid inflammatory disease associated with viral infections. Its pathogenesis is still unclear. Several SAT cases associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection as well as COVID-19 vaccination have been reported.
July 24, 2022: Prolonged Diarrhea after COVID-19 vaccination Up to 10% of individuals who received at least one dose of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine reported diarrhea as a side effect. This report describes case of diarrhea lasting longer than a month.
July 18, 2022: Adverse Ocular Events After SARS-CoV-2 vaccines SARS-CoV-2 virus provokes an insult to every single retinal structure, including retinal structures. Multiple cases of ocular inflammation after COVID-19 vaccines have been also reported.
July 8, 2022: Postvaccinal Encephalopathy The occasional incidence of acute encephalitis following vaccination may be as old as the procedure itself. First noted in 1801, it was reported after vaccination against smallpox, Hepatitis B, Influenza, Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR), and Haemophilus. Cases of post-vaccinal inflammation of the brain have been also reported after several COVID-19 vaccines. It may be related to a component of the vaccine in people with a genetic predisposition
June 23, 2022: Cardiovascular disorders after third dose Most cases of cardiovascular adverse events in vaccine recipients occur following the second dose. But severe reaction could happen even if the first and second dose did not cause any side effects.
June 15, 2022: Hepatitis triggered by a complex interplay with SARS-CoV-2 vaccination Several cases of autoimmune hepatitis following COVID-19 vaccination have been previously described. This post discusses two more: in a 52-year-old woman undergoing immunotherapy and a 17-year-old woman exposed to SARS-CoV-2 after vaccination with a detectable immune response. Unusual epidemic of hepatitis in children has been widely reported in recent weeks. No one has a definite answer to its causes yet.
June 7, 2022: Vaccine-Associated Amnesia Recent review of reports from the World Health Organization VigiBase ideitified 289 cases of amnesia associated with a COVID-19 vaccine. We documented two more in our study.
May 16, 2022: Resolving the subtypes of COVID-19 in the elderly SARS-Cov-2 is one of the most complex viruses known to medical science. Patients with COVID-19 present a broad spectrum of clinical manifestations, ranging from asymptomatic infection to lethal outcome. My systematic review of case reports aims to answer questions about COVID-19 subtypes in octogenarians, nonagenarians, and centenarians and offer possible solutions to organize the knowledge and identify the gaps.
April 30, 2022: Precision medicine for IBD A precision medicine approach discovers hidden genetic connections in Inflammatory Bowel Disease
April 25, 2022: Diabetes after COVID-19 vaccination Diabetes risk rises after COVID and, in some cases, after COVID-19 vaccination.
April 20, 2022: On Cabbage and SELENBP1 Mutations in the gene encoding Selenium Binding Protein were found in multiple individuals with extra-oral (microbiome-related) halitosis.
March 27, 2022: Autoimmune skin conditions in the elderly after vaccination We discuss 29 cases of bullous pemphigoid with a median age 82.
March 21, 2022: Passive Sensors for Health Monitoring Health data can be collected passively enabling continuous data collection and home-based trials.
March 19, 2022: Long COVID and Adverse Effects of Vaccination in incontinentia pigmenti Patients with certain genetics are prone to more severe COVID-19, long COVID and adverse reactions to vaccination.
March 11, 2022: Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children after SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination Multisystem inflammatory syndrome can follow SARS-CoV-2 infection, but it can be also induced by vaccination without current COVID-19 infection.
March 6, 2022: Hearing Loss after COVID-9 Vaccination In a study of vaccinations in Israel, an association was found between the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine and Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss. Similar case reports from other countries have been published in peer-reviewed journals.
March 3, 2022: Getting Out of Echo Chambers We need critical thinking and cultural intelligence analysis skills to recognize the legitimacy and ongoing necessity of opposing views.
February 28, 2022: Fatal outcomes in elderly patients after COVID-19 vaccination Many elderly individuals whose death was linked to the vaccine had preexisting cardiovascular diseases. Genetic predispositions could be also involved.
February 16, 2022: Catecholamine-Mediated Stress Cardiomyopathy after COVID-19 Infection & Vaccination An overly exuberant immune response to the vaccine can cause myocardial injury mediated by similar immune mechanisms as described with SARS-COV-2 and multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) cytokine storms.
February 15, 2022: Fatal breakthrough infections in solid organ transplant recipients 4 case reports of fatal breakthrough infections among liver and kidney transplant recipients aged 13-69.
February 13, 2022: Fatal COVID-19 breakthroughs in kidney disease patients Brazilian and Scottish studies show that patients with kidney disease do not benefit from existing COVID-19 vaccines.
January 21, 2022: Another case report on fatal breakthrough with brain involvement. Neurological manifestations are common in COVID-19. A sudden-onset reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome (RCVS), possibly caused by a transient dysregulation of cerebral vascular tone, is described in this fatal COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough case.
January 12, 2022: Post-infectious body odor A paper posted today on MedRxiv tells that dogs can easily detect long COVID - and not only acute COVID-19 - in at least half of the cases. Vaccine effectiveness may fail for individuals with particular genetics and we need more studies and more medical case reports to develop personalized preventative and curative approaches.
January 8, 2022: Risk Factors for Severe COVID-19 Outcomes Among Vaccinated Individuals New Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) emphasizes the usual risk factors for fatal breakthroughs: age 65 or older or at least one of these conditions: diabetes mellitus, immunosuppression, chronic kidney disease, chronic liver disease, chronic neurologic disease, chronic cardiac disease, or chronic pulmonary disease.
January 4, 2022: Worried about body odor? After COVID-19, many feel depressed and worried about their body odor
January 2, 2022: Lipid dysregulation Dysregulation of lipid metabolism has been a hallmark of many diseases and conditions.
January 1, 2022: Evolution of viruses All living beings are constantly adapting and evolving in many different ways.
December 31, 2021: Fatal breakthroughs in the alpha, delta and omicron eras Breakthrough infections used to be rare. But Coronavirus is evolving.
December 25, 2021: Myocarditis and COVID-19 For some people the risk of myocarditis may be higher following vaccination than infection.
December 16, 2021: Cutaneous manifestations of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 vaccines. SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19 vaccines are associated with a wide range of skin signs.
December 15, 2021: Microbiome in Complex Disease An imbalance between microorganisms in human microbiome is responsible for many complex diseases.
December 11, 2021: Fatal Covid-19 Breakthrough Case Following Severe Reaction to Chadox1 Ncov-19 Vaccine Altered immune responses to vaccines could be linked to higher rates of breakthrough infections.
December 10, 2021: Gamified Eating. Gamification approaches to nutrition education offer advantages for preventing disease over traditional persuasion methods. Yet about half of existing apps don't improve health and wellbeing because they are not developed in a skilled way.
December 2, 2021: What we might learn from Covid-19. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound effect on communities and MEBO community is not an exception.
December 1, 2021: FMO3 and COVID-19. Individuals differ in their susceptibility to viral infections. FMO3 is one of the few genes with expression correlated to ACE2. It is also linked to conditions increasing severity of COVID-19.
November 26, 2021: The Omicron. What we know about mutations of the newly identified Coronavirus variant.
November 5, 2021: The PKU Microbiome. Some probiotic strainds are overrepresented while others are underrepresented in the gut microbiome of adults with Phenylketonuria
October 30, 2021: Precision Antibiotics. Knowledge about baseline microbiome can be used to predict the magnitude of antibiotic-induced perturbations. Precision antibiotics should be tailored to individual paitent characteristics.
September 7, 2021: A Fresh Air Look at Ventilation. Environmental factors contribute to the spread of microorganisms causing diseases. Effective ventilation is one of basic infection control strategies along with other evidence-based measures.
August 12, 2021: August 12. When we thought COVID-19 was over, as more individuals were vaccinated against the deadly virus, the fourth wave of the pandemic struck, fueling a rise in breakthrough infections.
July 21, 2021: Community-Based Phenotypic Study of Safety, Tolerability, Reactogenicity and Immunogenicity of Emergency-Use-Authorized Vaccines Against COVID-19 and Viral Shedding Potential of Post-Vaccination Infections: Protocol for an Ambispective study Traditional clinical trials as well as citizen science - in its current form, official side effects reporting sites and social media are all susceptible to biases and misclassifications and do not reach all vaccinated individuals. New model suggests a complementary approach.
July 2, 2021: Viruses and Vaccines. Many disorders are thought to be post-infectious syndromes. Perhaps SARS-CoV-2 (and, in rare cases, COVID-19 vaccines) could reactivate the old viruses that caused those syndromes to begin with?
June 21, 2021: COVID-19 and vaccine reactogenicity in MEBO/PATM community. Adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines are influenced by a multitude of factors, many of which can be anticipated and alleviated. A certain level of inflammation is needed to trigger an effective adaptive immune response, but both environment and genetic makeup determine who is more likely to experience particular symptoms after infection and from the vaccine.
May 16, 2021: Autoimmune disorders and COVID-19 vaccines. Preliminary data from smaller studies and case reports after emergency-use-authorization for SARS-CoV-2 suggest vaccines could cause flare-ups of autoimmune diseases.
April 7, 2021: Vaccine to cure body odor? There could be a vaccine for everything. But there are still a lot of unknowns when it comes to individual differences in reactions to existing vaccines.
April 1, 2021: Laughter as Medicine: The pandemics is not over, but should we pause the jokes?
March 28, 2021: AI for Eyes: Thanks to the advances in AI and smart portable or home devices, the future of medicine, including teleophthalmology, is truly exciting.
March 20, 2021: Anaphylaxis to COVID-19 vaccinies: What do we know about anaphylactic reactions to Astrazeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and other COVID-19 vaccines?
February 20, 2021: The Eating Environment: Technology, in particular wearables and mobile phones, may help to improve the assessment of the eating environment and efficacy of dietary interventions.
January 26, 2021: Rebuild your Health: Development of personalized protocols and defining the right composition of probiotics and prebiotics is a long-term research endeavor.
January 26, 2021: Effects of diet, activities, environmental exposures and trimethylamine metabolism on alveolar breath compounds: : protocol for a retrospective case-cohort observational study
January 20, 2021: Irritable Bowel and COVID-19: Gastrointestinal symptoms - and poor gut health - could determine the severity of COVID-19
December 31, 2020: Warmth and Competence: Celebrating New Year with some science and a heart
December 27, 2020: The Breathprint of COVID-19 : Volatile organic compounds in breath could diagnose COVID-19 and severity of the disease.
December 26, 2020: Genes and Microbes: Intstinal microbiome can influence our nutritional decisions. But our genes could affect the assortment of our gut microbes.
November 4, 2020: Largest MEBO/PATM Clinical Study Reveals Important Insights: A new peer-reviewed paper published today in JMIR Dermatology
October 23, 2020: The Many Genes of TMAU: Twenty years ago Trimethylaminuria was linked to mutations in the FMO3 gene. As the list of associated SNPs kept growing, so was the list of other candidate genes.
September 30, 2020: Microbiome-directed medicine : Development of microbiome-directed medicine is stalled by the laborious nature of conventional cultivation methods and insufficient data for machine learning-driven approaches.
August 24, 2020: Dynamics of the Gut Microbiota in MEBO and PATM conditions: Protocol of a fully remote clinical study
August 14, 2020: When The Swallows Come Back: A story of tree swallows.
July 27, 2020: When Will We Have the Vaccine?: Five vaccine candidates are now in phase 3 of clinical development. When Will There Be Good News?
June 30, 2020: The Smell of COVID-19: All infections have a distinct odor signature and so does COVID-19.
May 21, 2020: Vaccines: Precision & Performance: Vaccine can be personalized based on individual's genomic makeup.
April 26, 2020: Reopening communities: Last month our world has been turned upside down, but we'll soon be slowly reopening.
April 13, 2020: Genes and Proteins of SARS-CoV-2: Scientists worked at speed to make SARS-CoV-2 gene and protein information available at record time.
March 7, 2020: Work less, play more?: Rethinking cities and villages for the future.
March 2, 2020: Sorry, I didn't quite get that: The holy grail of AI researchers is to fully understand human languages. What's the state of the art in 2020?
February 19, 2020: On human & robot friends: Research shows that our social circle is at its greatest when we are in early 20s.
February 10, 2020: Microbiome-based diagnostics: The progress in developing useful diagnostic applications based on microbiome testing is still behind expectations. Nevertheless, microbiome-based diagnostic and therapeutic applications are possible and will be the next step.
January 13, 2020: Gender: Are there related differences important for our study?
December 21, 2019: Flu season 2019-2020: This year's influenza season got an early start. Is the flu shot working?
December 17, 2019: Age - a truly confounding factor?: MEBO is a complex condition and while some of the cases seem simpler, non-linear analysis approaches are better equipped to handle the task. And this creates new challenges regarding the existence of confounding factors.
December 4, 2019: The Anna Karenina Principle: Sutterella: Sutterella group is the largest cohort identified in our study.
November 30, 2019: Concluding MEBO-uBIOME Study: We are very close to concluding our clinical trial NCT03582826 according to the pre-specified protocol.
October 30, 2019: Correlations and Interpretatios: We all know that “correlation does not imply causation.” But - as there's a grain of truth in every joke - seemingly unrelated factors could always be related on some level.
September 4, 2019: The Anna Karenina Principle: Alloprevotella: The Anna Karenina principle (AKP), in the context of metabolic disorders, means that an uncompensated deficiency in any one of important enzymes, or presence of any one of pathogenic microorganisms, dooms the person to having the MEBO/PATM symptoms.
August 29, 2019: Identifying subtypes of a stigmatized medical condition: Some conditions - such as obesity, depression and functional odor disorders - come with a social stigma. Understanding the etiology of these conditions helps to avoid stereotypes and find remedies.
August 28, 2019: Saving the Pond: We need to maintain ponds and lakes for their beauty, for their cultural significance, for next generations of people and other inhabitants of the Earth.
August 19, 2019: The Delicate Balance: Epulopiscium: bacteria that can wreak havoc in the gut.
August 14, 2019: Friends and Stars: Social networks are inundated with fake user profiles and untrustworthy users. Scientists from and academia are developing algorithms to calculate "trust index" and identify fakes, but reality is more complex than existing algorithms.
August 5, 2019: Microbiome and TMA metabolism: Your abilities to produce Trimethylamine N-Oxide may be encoded in your microbiome
July 21, 2019: How well are you feding your microbiome? A look at dietary patterns among participants of NCT03582826
June 24, 2019 Does blood type matter? Blood group types are associated with higher or lower susceptibility to specific microbes. Could ABO gene could also contribute to developing peculiar odors?
April 1, 2019 Technologies we wish existed. Science fiction stories and April fool jokes often describe speculative technology we wish existed in our world.
2018
November 28, 2018 Preliminary results of our Microbiome study (see also uBiome Press release)
September 14, 2018 The Brain Filters Our brains have a built-in mechanism known as a cortical filter that helps us ignore unimportant sounds.
May 7, 2018 Preparing to Launch our new Microbiome study (see also MEBO awarded grant from uBiome)
April 1, 2018 Technology Funnies and Futures. Some April Fool's jokes come true, some have the potential to be prophetic or ominous, and some products we really wish existed.
March 14, 2018 Microbes of anti-social odor. In recent years, microbes responsible for localized malodors have been mapped by using next generation sequencing approaches. However, intestinal microbes responsible for systemic malodor remain to be identified.
February 22, 2018 Crowdsourcing Personalized Medicine Healthcare is evolving from one-size-fits-all to personalized, from reactive to preventive, from intuitive to data-driven, from paternalistic to participatory. Can crowdsourcing facilitate this transformation?
January 23, 2018 Technology 2018 Recent years were filled with groundbreaking projects and the stars may be aligning for something really big, driven by advances in software and hardware.
January 15, 2018 Identifying subtypes of a stigmatized medical condition Some conditions - such as obesity, depression and functional odor disorders - come with a social stigma.
2017
November 30, 2017 Fine-Tuning Human Networks Every intelligent entity - whether human or machine - depends not only on the configurations of its neurons, but also connections between itself and others entities, optimized for efficient exchange of information. Hence, better human networks providing training and feedback from others will lead to both smarter humans and better AI.
October 5, 2017 The Evolution of Test. Will artificial Intelligence take over, testing software, hardware and interviewing people for the AI-proof jobs? Will the Internet of Things and Wearables improve the assessment of people's health, educational progress and behavior?..
September 10, 2017 Bringing Health and Happiness Cute animals are perfect distraction from our hectic lives
June 21, 2017 Do you want AI with that? When you hear about artificial intelligence, you may picture Ex Machina or Siri and recall flashy news headlines. But there are many other new ideas out there...
May 22, 2017: Unraveling the Mysteries of Mischievous Microbiome Science explains why some people smell worse than others despite keeping themselves squeaky clean. The body is crawling with bacteria increasing the risk for diseases for which we have unreserved levels of sympathy. It can also lead to unlikable conditions such as unpredictable and embarrassing outbursts of body odor - so bad it ruins social lives and careers. But there is no cure for metabolic body odor...
May 19, 2017: Community-led research discovers links between elusive symptoms and clinical tests BiorXiv DOI: 10.1101/139014
May 8, 2017: Let those who never smelled bad cast the first stone Analysis of our metabolism is crucial to comprehending the responses of our genes and microbes to the stresses of daily life, and to elucidating the causes and consequences of health and disease. We applied metabolomics approach to to an elusive condition that has always evaded diagnosis: socially and psychologically distressing odors that occur without a known or apparent cause ...
May 1, 2017: Sharing the Future with Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence has reached a buzzword utopia as it seems everyone is talking about self-driving cars, delivery drones and virtual assistants with human-like "intelligence." Some believe this new era of AI will make the American Dream universally accessible, enabling early retirement in bucolic settings. Others are concerned about a greater inequality created by a jobless future...
March 31, 2017: Giving the Underserved the Care they Deserve Artificial intelligence has reached a buzzword utopia as it seems everyone is talking about self-driving cars, delivery drones and virtual assistants with human-like "intelligence." Some believe this new era of AI will make the American Dream universally accessible, enabling early retirement in bucolic settings. Others are concerned about a greater inequality created by a jobless future...
February 12, 2017: More than Meets the Eye Eyeglasses are almost as old as the civilization itself. They have not changed much since Benjamin Franklin's bifocals in the 18th century. Nor were they made obsolete by laser surgery and contacts. Still, eyeglass technology leaves much to be desired...
December 29, 2016: Believe in Miracles and Yourself End of the year is a very special time as Holiday lights melt away our inner Grinch and we start to believe in miracles and new beginnings...
November 18, 2016: Who is afraid of IBS? I don’t mean to brag, but I’ve got irritable bowel syndrome, says a character of a sitcom. Irritable bowel syndrome used to be a rare condition, but became a problem of epidemic proportions, until the disease "came out of the closet". Then Internet searches and doctor visits started to dwindle down and less than halved compared to earlier decades. Is IBS no longer a problem?...
November 7, 2016: What the future will hold Elections are bad for your health. More than half of Americans, independently of their party preference, are stressed about upcoming elections, especially the oldest and the youngest voters. Social media is one of the major factors making this stress even worse...
October 31, 2016: What we learn from Halloween What can we learn from Halloween? A lot, judging by numerous scientific studies and less scientific surveys....
August 21, 2016: The future of Brain, Brawn and Beauty In the future all humans will be tall and beautiful look-alikes, as in GATTACA. Or they will split into frail beauties and sturdy beasts...
June 12, 2016: Seeing through the Skin Human skin emits light (albeit the glow is extremely weak) and a wide variety of small molecules that may be sometimes "sniffed" by dogs or even other humans. These chemicals tell a story about our health and wellness, things we eat and drink, touch and breathe. ...
May 13, 2016: Friday the 13th Our health depends on a multitude of environmental factors, day in and day out. And today is a special day - Friday the 13th. How should you feel on this day?...
April 27, 2016: Food the Restore a Heart We know that diet, exercise and low-stress life will keep the heart healthy. But sometimes things happen that are beyond our control. Thanks to more coordinated, faster emergency response and improved treatment, heart attacks aren't as deadly as they used to be. But survivors still face a substantial risk of further cardiovascular events. How to restore after a heart attack and prevent another one? ...
April 1, 2016: Technology, Dreams and Jokes As Sigmund Freud suggested, jokes often expose unconscious desires. Perhaps the technologies listed below, too, have a grain of our desires wrapped in a smile? ...
April 1, 2016: IoT marches on: Key Fool's day Announcements Technology keeps marching ahead. And the future gets smarter with the Internet of Things. Here are a few announcements made today, on April 1 2016 ...
February 17, 2016: Personalized Metabolomics While genomic data and proteomic analyses do not tell the whole story of what might be happening inside our body, metabolic profiling can give a snapshot of how the body works, providing a glimpse into the chemistry between us and our microbiomes ...
January 17, 2016: From Limping to Leaping Anno bisesto, anno funesto” (leap year, gloomy year), say Italians. “Leap year was ne’er a good sheep year.” agrees an old Scottish proverb. "Високосный год "Урожай" соберет" (leap year will gather the "Harvest") warns a Russian saying implying that there will be plenty of disasters - calamities, catastrophes and cataclysms. But usually there are not...
November 21, 2015: Where Are All the Wearables We Want to Wear? Millions of years ago our ancestors straightened up and started carrying tools around, instead of dropping them after use. And so technology became a part of daily routine. Wearables promised to add more convenience than carryables and, ever since humans started to wear clothes some 170,000 years ago, there was no lack of attempts to turn useful products into wearables. But this was not easy...
November 12, 2015: All You Need to Know About Wearables While cute and increasingly ubiquitous -- on the wrists, necks, or clipped to the body of all your friends -- many wearables are still single-purpose, redundant, or just plain useless, raising concerns about privacy and even etiquette. No wonder, there is a high return and product abandonment rate. Yet, the wearable future is coming faster than most futurologists thought ...
August 31, 2015: The Last Day of Summer Is that it? Summer is finally over. And so is the sweet melancholy of August. Tomorrow is September, the second most stressful month of the year. known for stock market volatility, storms and tornadoes, the season of "back to school" and the time for a change ...
June 30, 2015: Technologies and Generations Children no longer obey their parents and the end of the world is evidently approaching. So said a clay tablet inscribed almost 5 thousand years ago. But the world still stands, although we do go through golden and dark ages and societies rise and fall. Technology's golden age is now, or so we hope. How are current generations influenced by it and how will they shape the future world? ...
May 17, 2015: Cities of the Future As most people now live in cities and urban dwellers are likely to reach 70% of the world population by 2050, will it be actually possible to build happy cities where we can relax and rejuvenate? ...
May 10, 2015: Making Digestion Health Easier to Digest From balloons inserted into stomach or colon to the dreaded colonoscopy, digestive diagnostic procedures are not fun. Tracking diet and symptoms, too, is tedious and frustrating - unless, like a mouse, you can be isolated in a chamber linked to analyzers that automatically measure everything for you ...
March 25, 2015: The Smell of Stress and Fear Can we recognize if people around us are stressed, anxious or fearful without observing their facial expressions, body language and actions or hearing their voice and messages? Can we understand if we are stressed ourselves without assessing our heart rate, blood pressure, noticing dry throat, sweating, drops or surges in energy? Yes, we can - by using our nose - as humans, too, recognize and transmit their emotions through chemical senses ...
November 28, 2014: The Day After Thanksgiving Seasonal changes, holidays and shopping activities are among the environmental factors that can influence our health. What positive or negative effects can we expect on Black Friday and days right after?...
November 10, 2014: Intestinal Parasites: Friends, Foes and Shades of Gray Parasite is a bad word with negative connotations. Yet, "bad things" can be good for you - and every situation is different....
September 6, 2014: Is the Internet of Things the Real Thing? The Internet of Things: an exciting new world with a digital nervous system or a nightmare where objects take decisions while we are unconscious?...
June 28, 2014: On Luck, Skill and Hard Work - in Soccer and Life Big data doesn't always get us closer to truth. Especially if there a fair bit of luck involved. And many think this applies to football/soccer games (Sally and Anderson, for example, say that soccer results are 50% luck). Yet data analysis provides valuable, sometimes counter-intuitive insights into this beautiful sport and the science of winning and losing in general ...
April 13, 2014: The Curse of the Internet It's hard to imagine our lives without the Internet - either mobile or desktop. But despite all the advantages and conveniences, does the Internet really serve us or is it the other way around? ...
February 3, 2014: Digestive Diagnostics: Portable, Wearable, Insideable Next sensors will be in you, said a recent popular article. And some of them will monitor your digestive system. ...
December 15, 2013: From Cyber Zombiness to Ambient Awareness Dr. Phlox, the Enterprise surgeon, responded to the comment about movies (aka stories unfold on the screen) by answering: "Well, we had something similar a few hundred years ago, but they lost their appeal when people discovered their real lives were more interesting." At this stage of our evolution, virtual characters and screens are taking over our lives. ...
November 4, 2013: Keeping Pollutants Out with Exercise Food, drugs, air and everyday products like soap, cloth and grocery receipts are polluting our bodies with hundreds of toxic chemicals. New chemicals are constantly being introduced into our environment and the effects of most of them on human health are not known. About 30% of human diseases are due to environmental exposures as genetics is not the whole story ...
October 29, 2013: IBS: pity, compassion and discrimination The effects of IBS on quality of life may be more substantial than those of many other chronic diseases. It affects school, work and life, putting the sufferers at risk for social isolation. ...
October 20, 2013: Are You What You Read or Do You Read What You Are? The environment plays a significant role in our health. We are exposed to multiple physical, chemical and biological challenges, including information - like news and gossip stories related to health and wellness. How exactly is it affecting us?...
September 11, 2013: Asthma in September Asthma sufferers know that when it rains it spores - as fungi and mold get moving through the air. But many don't realize that the most dangerous month for children's asthma symptoms is dry September. A study of hospital data found the spike in admissions in two to three weeks after the return to school. It happens in the United States, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Israel, Finland, Trinidad, and Canada...
September 7, 2013: Body odor and skin bacteria Our bodies are rainforests of microbes feeding off the leftovers from our meals and contributing to a variety of body odors. Human skin is inhabited and re-populated depending on health conditions, age, genetics, diet, the weather and climate zones, occupations, cosmetics, soaps, hygienic products and moisturizers. All these factors contribute to the variation in the types of microbes...
August 18, 2013: Building 23rd century tricorder in the 21st The $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize and $2.25 million Nokia Sensing Challenges are trying to identify the best portable technologies for diagnosing disease - as easily as Dr. McCoy's tricorder of the 23rd Century could. What scientific knowledge could help us to develop it in this age? Detecting metabolites, sensing DNA, imaging the nanoworld of the human body or interaction between matter and energy?,,,
July 4, 2013: The hazards of working nights: from breasts and beyond The jury is still out whether Angelina's choice is brave or fearful, but the fact remains: having or not having the "bad" genes is not enough to develop or avoid developing breast cancer,.,
June 28, 2013: I Know What You Ate This Summer Despite active foodstagramming and foodteresting, and eagerness to show pictures of meals and diet reports to friends on social media, we don't really want others to know everything we eat. But they might know anyway...
June 13, 2013: Putting the social back.. and forth In 2009, it looked like both Search and Social bubbles were bursting. But Social Digital era has only just begun...
June 9, 2013: Is Your Work Giving you IBS? All jobs come with health risks. Some risks are obvious in the short-term, others seem very minor but with plenty of negative long-term consequences. Such as weight gain or irritable bowel syndrome...
June 6, 2013: When it Smells Like Team Spirit Why do we connect and collaborate, deciding to "walk in the light of creative altruism" instead of the "darkness of destructive selfishness"? Is it because of subtle behavioral clues that make us "click" and consider the other person a part of the group? Or is it because it smells like team spirit? It very well might be. We (literally) smell love, victory, fear, along with chemicals that motivate us to cooperate. As was recently shown in double-blind placebo-controlled studies that quantitatively measured generosity and cooperation...
May 14, 2013: Coffee: Bugs and Debugging Coffee can bug or de-bug you - in many different ways. It can actually energize your gut bugs. Nestle researchers showed that for sixteen healthy adult volunteers consuming a daily dose of 3 cups of coffee during 3 weeks. This led to an increase of the metabolic activity and/or numbers of Bifidobacterium species, important probiotics in the food industry...
May 1, 2013: Inhale and feel it with your heart All you need is love. Or failing that chocolate. And not only because dark chocolate could lower the risk of heart disease, blood pressure and sugar levels. As Dr. Schieberle's team recently discovered that heart could sense and enjoy the sweet smell of chocolate too. When they put small odor-emitting molecules from chocolate on one side of a dish, cells actually moved towards the aroma...
March 18, 2013: Blood and Taxes Nothing is certain, but blood pressure does increase in the end of winter and beginning of spring. According to Aurametrix users and google statistics. As a matter of fact, it highly correlates with tax fever - as found by Google Correlate algorithm comparing millions of web queries...
February 9, 2013: Will you get the flu this season? Worst of flu season may be over. But you can still catch a chill. If you shake hands with lots of sick people, for example. Or don't keep sufficiently warm. Yes, your mother has told you, and you thought it was just an old wives' tale, but it wasn't.
February 7, 2013: Big Data of Sounds Hearing begins with the ears, but it's more than the sum of sounds. We are able to recognize piano notes and experience music, understand speech in noisy surroundings and localize voice in 3D.
January 31, 2013: Odors and Infections Many illnesses are associated with distinct odors. Especially those caused by infectious or opportunistic microbes inside the body or on its surfaces. Body odor of someone infected with C. difficile, for example, can appear "swampy", Rotavirus gives sharply sweet putrid smell that some people associate with wet dogs, H. pylori can create a range of foul odors, and pseudomonas infections can smell like grapes and bitter almonds.
December 24, 2012: Molehills and Mountains If you suffer from IBS, chances are you're very considerate of others and even possibly an anxious "catastrophizer." It was repeatedly concluded based on magnetic resonance imaging of the brain and psychological questionnaires - for students and non-students, Easterners and Westerners, right-handed and left-handed individuals.
November 29, 2012: Come out smelling like a rose You are what you eat. And you smell like your food. Well, it's actually a bit more complicated - as we emit complex combinations of volatile chemicals produced from food by our own metabolic system as well as microbes that call us home. Same foods can be translated into a wide range of odors, depending on the individual.
November 26, 2012: Close your eyes and tap your heels GPS shoes can point to where you're going, but how will they know where to go? By consulting the map uploaded via USB and its own GPS receivers, wirelessly communicating with each other. For future models, you could probably set up WiFi to let your shoes download more information, talk with other people's shoes and modify your route on the go. So your footware might need its own network access, like agent Maxwell Smart's left shoe with a mobile subscription plan.
September 25, 2012: Mirror, Mirror on the wall, Am I healthy after all? Health management applications will not be limited to smartphones or smart homes. All objects in our lives will gradually become "smarter." Mobile phones can already manage vacuum cleaners and thermostats. Refrigerators can tweet, check Google calendars, download recipes, play tunes and alert us about food spoilage. Mirrors can monitor our weight and exercise. There is still more emphasis these days on technological wizardry than on actual benefits, but systems like Aurametrix are bringing it all together and generating valuable insights.
August 5, 2012: Carbohydrates for your bacteria Our bacteria are picky eaters. Some of them - like Prevotelia - prefer a high carbohydrate diet, while others - like Bacteroides - stick to unhealthy western lifestyle with lots of meat and fat. The most prevalent bacteria in the gut of horses, cows and goats prefer people consuming alcohol and polyunsaturated fats. Methanobrevibacter is most abundant in anorexic nervosa patients. Gram negative bacillus Bilophila wadsworthia loves people with gangrenous appendicitis or those whose diets are high in milk fat. The most widely promoted prebiotics inulin and fructooligosaccharides seem to attract Bifidobacteria. What about diets low in poorly absorbed fermentable carbohydrates aka FODMAPs that seem to aggravate irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) ? Which bacteria is responsible?
July 15, 2012: On Apples and Trees An apple doesn't fall far from the tree. So if you don't like apples, trees won't like you either. And the other way around.
June 23, 2012: Cars That Care Health technology of the future promises an easy life with no interruption in your daily activities. For example, information about your health could be collected while you're driving. A car is already viewed as a health platform and wellness coach by leading manufacturers. How would this work?
May 26, 2012: More apps, less flu? Fewer people caught the flu this season compared with past years. And many more apps tracking the flu have been developed. Any relationship between these two trends?
May 7, 2012: Finding the Goldilocks Solution A top story in today's news is related to a recent scientific paper published in Current Biology concerning the dinosaurs. British scientists wanted to know, "Could methane produced by sauropod dinosaurs have helped drive Mesozoic climate warmth?" By their estimates, some 520 million tons of methane (a "greenhouse gas" emission) were produced by the flatulent beasts every year. This begs the question, do flatulent humans today also contribute to global warming?
April 30, 2012 Why Red Beans And Rice Are Good What if an invisible digital nurse could take detailed notes about your physiology, psychology, symptoms and activities, and record the precise ingredients in your foods? And what if this digital nurse also could simultaneously collect information about your environment, including the weather, air quality, allergens and even disease outbreaks near your location? (Mendeley
March 11, 2012: Hello Summertime!.. Owls Beware Environment can significantly affect human health. And the risks are not limited to air pollution, seasonal allergies, tainted water or chemicals in food. Our life dramas are set against the backdrop of world events that contribute to environmental health too, to a lesser or greater extent. How does springing clocks forward affect our lives?
January 10, 2012: Studying body odor: one step at a time Unpleasant body odors could be a sign of a disease. But even when the cause of the disease is known - an example is trimethylaminuria or TMAU - there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. Elimination of choline and other essential nutrients from diet can be harmful and unhelpful. Everyone has their own unique needs, with individual combinations of foods, activities and optimal environmental conditions.
December 24, 2011: How does Christmas smell like? Like cinnamon! So say studies by European scientists. And even though the smell of cinnamon is described as "pungent" (besides "warm", 'sweet", and "spicy"), it fires up our brains, evoking a joyful Christmas mood and making us more generous. Cinnamon is classified as a stimulant. Smelling and tasting cinnamon could enhance attention and virtual recognition memory, at least in comparison to smells of peppermint, jasmine or cherries.
December 9, 2011: Can Software help Health care? Apps, apps and more apps. Software is everything and everything runs on software. Almost every industry in the U.S. has been disrupted by software. The health care field is not one of them. Easily accessible consumer information makes everyone a little bit doctor. Emerging portable diagnostic devices will strengthen the transition. Are we up to it?
December 6, 2011: The Road to Ammonia Why do I smell like Ammonia? This question, in thousands of variations, has been asked over and over again at every major question/answer site, especially teen, bodybuilding and athletic forums. The Internet provides plenty of opinions. Medical sites talk about diseases like chronic kidney failure, hepatic cirrhosis or H. pylori infection. Fitness sites recommend drinking more water, reevaluating protein sources and eating more carbohydrates. What are these diet-odor links?
November 12, 2011: Adding red to your diet A number of studies have suggested that a higher intake of lycopene-containing foods decreases the risk of heart disease, prostate cancer, other cancers and infections, even cataracts and asthma. What are the potential side effects?
August 14, 2011: Hold the Starch? Starch is that stuff that stiffens your shirts. It's also what most people eat for fuel. Wheat, rice, corn, oats, potatoes are all very starchy foods. Many popular diet plans call starch a second-rate food that should be avoided at all costs. No-starch and low starch diets are favored by irritable bowel communities, while former Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig and Atkins enthusiasts love the new Carb Lovers Diet praising starch. Yet, there may be something good about starch even for those with sensitive stomachs.
May 30, 2011: Tryptophan in food: Will it make you happy, sleepy or smelly? And the answer is ... either or all of the above. And this is not a complete list of all that can happen. In some rare conditions, for example, tryptophan could also make your pee purple.
April 4, 2011: Much Ado About Bowel Movement Want to manage your toilet metrics? There's an app for that. Actually, multiple apps - like this one recording precise GPS location of bowel events along with their shapes and odors or IBS symptom tracker and GI monitor, approved and designed by gastroenterologists. Yet, the lists of metrics provided by these applications are not complete.
April 1, 2011: The FODMAP diet "Functional gut" symptoms (bloating, wind, abdominal distention, discomfort, pain, altered bowel habits) can be controlled by diet, but most theories of how exactly food components are linked to symptoms are lacking consistency.
February 2, 2011: Colonoscopy for everyone! ..or Gonna Buy Me A Dog New research from Japan brings good news: dogs can be almost as accurate as a colonoscopy exam.
December 17, 2010: Danger, Will Robinson!!! or injury prevention with sensors and algorithms Health is determined by many factors including Behavior (Physical Activity, Eating habits, Tobacco or substance abuse, responsible sexual choices), Mental Health, Injury and Violence, Environmental Quality, Preventative measures such as immunization, and Access to Health Care. Injuries are most likely to be perceived as "accidents" and "acts of fate", but they depend on the same determinants as other health factors: individual behavior, social and physical environment. The likelihood of injuries - unintentional ones and those caused by acts of violence - can be computed from physical location, gene-environment interactions, prior medical history, and physical traits.
October 12, 2010: You are the Chosen One, at least by your bacteria Host genomics is not the main decision-making factor for bacteria immigrating into human body, but it is an important factor. Two papers recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences help to understand why you are chosen and how the choosers make their decisions.
August 21, 2010: Of blood and breath: metabolite-based diagnosis of ovarian cancer Physicians always knew that breath contains clues to diseases. Chemicals in breath often correlate with chemicals in saliva and blood - be it alcohol, anaesthetics or other metabolites. Recent paper is claiming 99% to 100% accuracy of detecting ovarian cancer by metabolites in blood.
August 15, 2010: Predicting catastrophic health events "I've just picked up a fault in the AE35 unit. It's going to go 100% failure in 72 hours". These were famous words of the almighty computer HAL in "2001: A Space Odyssey". Few of us believe too much in software forecasts - be it weather, earthquakes or computer hard disk failures. Yet, we all know that sometimes it works. And such systems are very valuable, assuming they continuously improve.
August 11, 2010: On cancers and petroleum spills Researchers have known for years that microbiome-determined smell of cancer patients is chemically different from healthy individuals. One more study featured in British Journal of Cancer brings us a bit closer to an inexpensive, easy-to-use, portable device for home diagnostics.
July 28, 2010: Hormonal Manipulation of Olfactory Cues, or How to Lose a Guy in 10 days Body odors are important cues used for social and sexual discrimination and are determined by microbiomes.
December 21, 2009: The Power Of Visualization Networks and clustering methods help to uncover changes in complex large-scale systems, but more sophisticated approaches are needed to distinguish between real trends and noisy data, between meaningful structural changes and random fluctuations. This blog discusses ways to visualize data that can be applied to probiotic production (eg, scheduling information for batches with Gantt charts, alluvial diagrams for colonization dynamics and bubble graphs illustrating the operational taxonomic units)
August 28, 2009: Metabonomic Profiling as a Non-invasive Inexpensive Diagnostics Tool Metabolite profiling was shown to be a promising diagnostic technique for many diseases and conditions.
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