Karen Pendergrass, Standards Team

Chronic alcohol worsened periodontal bone damage in rats and shifted their oral microbial community, linking alcohol exposure to dysbiosis-driven periodontitis.

High-fertility sows show elevated blood serotonin and enriched serotonin-related gut bacteria, both positively correlated with litter size.

In postmenopausal women, a low-fat vegan diet with daily soybeans cut total hot flashes by 95 percent, and shifts in specific gut bacteria such as Porphyromonas and Prevotella corporis tracked with reductions in severe hot flashes.

Deep metagenomic sequencing of 136 fecal samples built 952 high-quality microbial genomes and found Ruminococcus bromii was significantly less diverse at the strain level in Parkinson's disease than in controls (p equals 0.002), with control samples also carrying more copies of genes like speF.

Feeding mice oats at the time of amoxicillin dosing (prophylactic timing) protected gut microbiome diversity from antibiotic damage better than starting oats before or after treatment, and shifted communities toward antibiotic stress management rather than carbohydrate scavenging.

A pooled analysis of 3,741 stool metagenomes across 18 cohorts improved colorectal cancer prediction to an average AUC of 0.85 and identified strain-level biomarkers, including Faecalibacterium prausnitzii subclades linked to late-stage disease.

In 30 lung cancer patients versus 30 controls, gut bacterial diversity was unchanged but composition differed. Bifidobacterium fell from 4.7 to 1.5 percent and the whole Actinobacteria phylum dropped, while Enterococcus rose from 0.2 to 4.3 percent, marking possible gut biomarkers of lung cancer.

In 48 Chinese women with preterm premature rupture of membranes, vaginal microbiota showed higher diversity and lower Lactobacillus dominance, with Gardnerella and Prevotella enriched. A Lactobacillus-based signature separated cases from term controls with an AUC of about 91 percent.

A four-year prospective study of 70 children found gut microbiota clustered into distinct biodiversity groups linked to diet and inflammation, predating excess weight gain in more than half of them.

Found the ketogenic diet depleted bifidobacteria, E. rectale, and Dialister while increasing E. coli in children with epilepsy.

Adolescent HFD exposure caused lasting HPA axis dysfunction in female rats even after switching to a standard diet.

A two-cohort shotgun metagenomic study of Parkinson's disease found Intestinimonas butyriciproducens consistently altered across four global cohorts, alongside shifts in microbial carbohydrate, lipid, amino acid, and nucleotide metabolism.

Found greater skin microbial diversity in vitiligo lesional skin, with NBUVB irradiation appearing to erase these community differences.

Found Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, and Moraxella catarrhalis almost exclusively in adenoids, not palatine tonsils, in children.

In 73 men, semen microbiome differences tracked abnormal semen parameters. Abnormal sperm motility carried more Lactobacillus iners (9.4 versus 2.6 percent, p = 0.046), and abnormal sperm concentration carried more Pseudomonas stutzeri and fluorescens but less Pseudomonas putida.

In the largest pediatric Crohn's cohort studied to date, a dysbiosis axis of increased Proteobacteria-type taxa and decreased Clostridiales tracked with disease, worsened by antibiotics.

In mild COVID-19 patients with gastrointestinal long-COVID symptoms, gut microbes of the Proteobacteria phylum, including Neisseria, Lautropia and Agrobacterium, ectopically colonized the oral cavity and correlated with potentially harmful serum metabolites. Patients without long-COVID symptoms showed little microbiome change.

In 200 Indian women (140 term, 60 preterm) with 600 vaginal swabs, Lactobacillus dominated term pregnancies while anaerobes rose early in preterm cases. A translated PCR-dipstick assay detected risk-associated bacteria with 74.2 percent sensitivity and 67.1 percent specificity.

In Crohn's disease patients, butyrate-producing gut bacteria were depleted. Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, Roseburia inulinivorans, Ruminococcus torques, Blautia faecis and others fell versus healthy controls, and lower Roseburia inulinivorans and Ruminococcus torques tracked with active inflammation marked by raised C-reactive protein.

In a controlled trial of 24 healthy adults on a Western diet, four weeks of daily kombucha produced only modest gut microbiome shifts, enriching a kombucha-borne probiotic and other short-chain-fatty-acid producers, with no significant change in inflammation or most metabolic markers.

Among 130 Brazilian children in one city, wealthier private-school children carried more Staphylococcus aureus, Clostridium difficile, and Salmonella, while children in poverty had higher counts of Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Escherichia coli, Lactobacillus, and Methanobrevibacter smithii. High socioeconomic status tracked with a less favorable gut profile.

A guild-level gut microbiome index built from two competing metagenomic guilds classified COVID-19 severity at admission with an average AUROC of 0.83.

Colorectal cancer patients showed enriched Prevotella copri and Methanobrevibacter smithii, with depleted Bifidobacterium animalis and Ruminococcus, versus healthy controls.

COVID-19 patients showed reduced gut bacterial diversity and more opportunistic pathogens such as Streptococcus, Rothia, Veillonella, and Actinomyces than healthy people. A five-microbe signature separated COVID-19 from controls with accuracy up to 0.89.