Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Possible treatment for inflammatory bowel disease with probiotic

Gut feeling: bacteria may inspire bowel treatment - Yahoo! News
2008.05.28
"...a complex sugar molecule made naturally by a species of intestinal bacteria called Bacteroides fragilis prevented the development of an animal version of inflammatory bowel disease in laboratory mice..."We are colonized in our intestine normally with many bacteria -- 100 trillion or so," Dennis Kasper, a professor of medicine, microbiology and molecular genetics at Harvard Medical School...When the scientists exposed the mice to the "good" bacterium, Bacteroides fragilis, they were protected from an inflammatory bowel condition due to the action of a sugar molecule, called polysaccharide A, made by the bacterium...Mice that were given oral doses of just the sugar molecule also were protected...The sugar molecule worked by stimulating the mouse immune system to make a substance called interleukin-10, which changes the body's response to the disease-causing bacteria, dampening inflammation..."

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