COMPASSION

Affirmation of life is the spiritual act by which man ceases to live thoughtlessly and begins to devote himself to his life
with reverence in order to give it true value.
— Albert Schweitzer

12/24/2012

China researchers link obesity to bacteria - the gut is the "foundation for human health"

 
December 19th, 2012 in Overweight and Obesity



Chinese researchers have identified a bacteria which may cause obesity, according to a new paper suggesting diets that alter the presence of microbes in humans could combat the condition.

Researchers in Shanghai found that mice bred to be resistant to obesity even when fed high-fat foods became excessively overweight when injected with a kind of human bacteria and subjected to a rich diet.

The bacterium—known as enterobacter—had been linked with obesity after being found in high quantities in the gut of a human volunteer, said the report, written by researchers at Shanghai's Jiaotong University.

The mice were injected with the bacterium for up to 10 weeks as part of the experiment.

The experiments show that the bacterium "may causatively contribute to the development of obesity" in humans, according to the paper published in the peer-reviewed journal of the International Society for (ISMEJ).

A human patient lost over 30 kilograms in nine weeks after being placed on a diet of ", traditional Chinese and prebiotics", which reduced the bacterium's presence in the patient's gut to "undetectable" levels, the paper said.


One of the report's authors, Zhao Liping, lost 20 kilograms in two years after adopting a diet of fermented probiotic foods such as bitter melon to adjust the balance of bacteria in his gut, the American magazine Science said in an article this year on his previous research.

Zhao's work on the role of bacteria in obesity is inspired by traditional Chinese beliefs that the gut is the "foundation for human health", Science reported.

The scientists wrote in their latest paper that they "hope to identify more such obesity-inducing bacteria from various " in future research.

Obesity worldwide has more than doubled since 1980,
 according to the , with 
more than 500 million adults worldwide suffering from the condition according to 2008 statistics.



(c) 2012 AFP
"China researchers link obesity to bacteria." December 19th, 2012.


Source:
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-china-link-obesity-bacteria.html

China researchers link obesity to bacteria

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*Remember ulcers were discovered to be caused by bacteria after years of other things, like stress, were blamed for causing the condition.



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