Chemicals in e-cigarettes disrupt the gut barrier and trigger inflammation
Touted by makers as a healthy alternative to traditional nicotine cigarettes, new research indicates the chemicals found in e-cigarettes disrupt the gut barrier and trigger inflammation in the body, potentially leading to a variety of health concerns.
In the study, published Jan. 5, 2021 in the journal
iScience, Soumita Das, PhD, associate professor of pathology, and Pradipta Ghosh, MD, professor of cellular and molecular medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego School of Medicine, with colleagues, found that chronic use of nicotine-free e-cigarettes led to a leaky gut, in which microbes and other molecules seep out of the intestines, resulting in chronic inflammation. Such inflammation can contribute to a variety of diseases and conditions, including inflammatory bowel disease, dementia, certain cancers, atherosclerosis, liver fibrosis, diabetes and arthriti
Researchers identify the missing link between intestinal disease and brain injury in premature infants
Physicians have long known that necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), a potentially lethal inflammatory condition that destroys a premature infant s intestinal lining, is often connected to the development of severe brain injury in those infants who survive. However, the means by which the diseased intestine communicates its devastation to the newborn brain has remained largely unknown.
Now, working with mice, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine and the University of Lausanne in Switzerland have identified that missing link an immune system cell that they say travels from the gut to the brain and attacks cells rather than protect them as it normally does.