While recent research has concluded that using soap containing antimicrobial ingredients could be doing more harm than good, one New York Times Magazine journalist’s experiments with products that replace traditional cleaning compounds with bacteria treatments have reportedly left her skin softer and smoother than ever before.
To access to full article: Ditch The Soap And Water? AOBiome Wants You To Wash With Bacteria Instead!
Tracing one scientist’s journey toward understanding the crucial importance of the microbiome, this revolutionary book will take readers to the forefront of trail-blazing research while revealing the damage that overuse of antibiotics is doing to our health: contributing to the rise of obesity, asthma, diabetes, and certain forms of cancer. In Missing Microbes, Dr. Martin Blaser invites us into the wilds of the human microbiome where for hundreds of thousands of years bacterial and human cells have existed in a peaceful symbiosis that is responsible for the health and equilibrium of our body.
To review the book: Missing Microbes: How the overuse of Antibiotics is Fueling Our Modern Plagues (image from the book cover)
The etiology of arthritis has been sought for centuries, employing the art and science of the times to clarify, identify, and establish a cause and a cure. None other than Sir William Osler in his 1909 edition of Principles and Practice of Medicine stated that the etiology/origin of rheumatoid arthritis was related to “the nervous system or infections, with exciting causes that included age, gender, daily history, cold, damp, errors in diet, worry and care, and local injuries.”
To access to full article: The microbiome, autoimmunity, and arthritis: cause and effect: an historical perspective (Image from http://www.privatemdlabs.com)
** This article is forwarded from David Elpern, M.D.**
Low birth weight infants are host to numerous microorganisms immediately after birth, and the microbiomes of their mouths and gut start out very similar but differentiate significantly by day 15 according to a study published in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
To access to full article: Microbiome in gut, mouth, and skin of low birth weight infants differentiate weeks after birth (Image from http://www.dailymarion.com/2011/03/21/preemies-in-texas-a-collision-of-ideologies/)
Could the microbes that inhabit our guts help explain that old idea of “gut feelings?” There’s growing evidence that gut bacteria really might influence our minds. “I’m always by profession a skeptic,” says Dr. Emeran Mayer, a professor of medicine and psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But I do believe that our gut microbes affect what goes on in our brains.”
To listen to the story: Gut Bacteria Might Guide The Workings Of Our Minds (Illustration by Benjamin Arthur for NPR)
Objectives: We investigated the facial skin microbiota of Japanese acne patients. Methods: Skin swab samples were obtained from 100 acne patients and 28 healthy controls to evaluate Propionibacterium and Staphylococcus spp. using a culture method. Malassezia spp. were evaluated using a nonculture method. Antibiotic resistance of Propionibacterium spp. was also examined
To access to abstract: Analysis of Facial Skin-Resident Microbiota in Japanese Acne Patients
Recent years’ investigations of the co-evolution and functional integration of the human body and its commensal microbiota have disclosed that themicrobiome has a major impact on physiological functions including protection against infections, reaction patterns in the immune system, and disposition for inflammation-mediated diseases.
To access to full article: Bacterial skin commensals and their role as host guardians (Image from the article)
In the last decade, an extensive effort has been made to characterize the human microbiota, due to its clinical and economic interests. However, a metagenomic approach to the skin microbiota is hampered by the high proportion of host DNA that is recovered. In contrast with the burgeoning field of gut metagenomics, skin metagenomics has been hindered by the absence of an efficient method to avoid sequencing the host DNA. We present here a method for recovering microbial DNA from skin samples, based on a combination of molecular techniques.
To access to full article: A new method for extracting skin microbes allows metagenomic analysis of whole-deep skin (Image from the article)
The resident microbial community, harboured by humans in sites such as the skin and gastrointestinal tract, is enormous, representing a candidate environmental factor affecting susceptibility to complex diseases, where both genetic and environmental risk factors are important. The potential of microorganisms to influence the human immune system is considerable, given their ubiquity. The impact of the host-gene-microbe interaction on the maintenance of health and the development of disease has not yet been assessed robustly in chronic inflammatory conditions.
To access to abstract: The bacterial skin micro biome in psoriatic arthritis an unexplored link in pathogenesis: challenges and opportunities offered by recent technological advances (Image from http://arthritishelppc.blogspot.com/2012/04/psoriatic-arthritis-vs-psoriasis.html)
Artist Sonja Bäumel has explored the human skin microbiome in her project ‘Cartography of the Human Body’. To illustrate the diversity of the bacteria and fungi on the skin, she cultured isolates from her own body to create an innovative art project.
To access to full article: Illustrating the human body with ‘MIcrocartography’ (Image by Sonja Bäumel, A Petri dish map of artist Sonja Bäumel’s body shape)
Skin Microbiome 