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Author: Sima

Published on Leave a comment on Lactobacillus Name Changes

A group of international researchers got together and proposed reclassifying all the Lactobacillus species into 25 different groups (genera) a few years ago.

This was done because the Lactobacillus group had gotten too large and diverse, with over 250 bacterial species in it. The proposed name changes were then adopted by the leading microbiology society, which is why scientists currently use both new and old bacterial names, or just one or the other.

One bacteria important for sinus health is L. sakei. Lactobacillus sakei has now been reclassified as Latilactobacillus sakei, but both terms are used in research and elsewhere. The abbreviation L. sakei stays the same.

Most of the common Lactobacillus species that are used in probiotics have a name change, but typically either name (new and old) is acceptable. What many companies do to avoid confusion is to just use the abbreviated name (e.g., L. sakei, L. rhamnosus, and L. casei).

Examples of name changes for commonly used probiotic species: Lactobacillus sakei is now Latilactobacillus sakei, Lactobacillus rhamnosus is now Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus, Lactobacillus plantarum is now Lactiplantibacillus plantarum, Lactobacillus brevis is now Levilactobacillus brevis, Lactobacillus salivarius is now Ligilactobacillus salivarius, Lactobacillus fermentum is now Limosilactobacillus fermentum, and Lactobacillus reuteri is now Limosilactobacillus reuteri.

However, the names of some commonly used probiotic species stayed the same, such as Lactobacillus crispatus, Lactobacillus gasseri, and Lactobacillus johnsonii.

Excerpts from ISAPP (International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics): New names for important probiotic Lactobacillus species

The genus Lactobacillus was listed as the fifth most important category of living organism to have influenced the planet throughout its evolutionary history in a 2009 book, What on Earth Evolved?. From their central role in food fermentations around the globe to their ability to benefit health in their human and animal hosts, species of Lactobacillus have great importance in our lives. ...continue reading "Lactobacillus Name Changes"

Published on Leave a comment on Looking at the Immune System in Chronic Sinusitis
L. sakei

There has been an exciting development in chronic sinusitis research and treatment using the beneficial bacteria Lactobacillus sakei (L. sakei), specifically with the probiotic powder Lanto Sinus. This recent study took a different approach to chronic sinusitis by looking at the immune system.

Researchers conducted a sinusitis study of individuals with chronic sinusitis, all who had undergone multiple sinus surgeries and were considered hard to treat (had continuing problems with sinusitis, thus refractory). The researchers found that using Lanto Sinus (with its specific strain of L. sakei Probio65) had very good results in treating many of the individuals.

Lanto Sinus probiotic powder

The treatments involved using Lanto Sinus (L. sakei proBio65) as a nasal rinse (1/4 teaspoon of Lanto Health powder in 2 tablespoons of normal saline nasal rinse) once a day and 1/4 teaspoon (240 mg) twice a day in food. This continued until they felt healthy. [IMPORTANT: Stop the use of L. sakei when feeling better.]

The researchers approached chronic sinusitis by looking at the immune system, specifically IL-12, a substance involved with immune system functioning. They found that IL-12 levels can be low in chronic sinusitis sufferers. Using L. sakei raises IL-12 levels, which they thought explained the positive results.

In other words, their thoughts are that microbial imbalances in chronic sinusitis could contribute to IL-12 signaling defects, and this results in low IL-12 levels. Which L. sakei can correct. 

How was IL-12 measured in the study? Blood was drawn from each person and a lab analysis was done - called a pSTAT4 phosphorylation assay (which measures immune health related to IL-12).

Next: Now the researchers are starting another study to further look into this. Stay tuned!

Abstract (summary) excerpts from medRxiv (for preprints), and now at National Library of Medicine: STAT4 Phosphorylation of T-helper Cells predicts surgical outcomes in Refractory Chronic Rhinosinusitis

Abstract

Objective: Chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) impacts an estimated 5% to 15% of people worldwide, incurring significant economic healthcare burden. There is a urgent need for the discovery of predictive biomarkers to improve treatment strategies and outcomes for CRS patients. ...continue reading "Looking at the Immune System in Chronic Sinusitis"

Published on Leave a comment on Years of Education and Life Expectancy in the US

We all want to live a long and healthy life, but what helps accomplish this? A recent study found that the years of education a person has makes a big difference - the more years of education, the longer the average life expectancy. By years!

In the large study (involving 3110 US counties), researchers found that life expectancy differed by about 11 years when comparing college graduates versus high school graduates or only some high school.

Life expectancy in the US was highest among college graduates (84.2 years) lower among those with some college education (82.1 years), lower still among those with a high school diploma (77.3 years), and lowest among those with some high school (73.5 years). When combining everyone (all groups), average life expectancy in 2019 was 80.1 years

Also, between 2000 and 2019, life expectancy increased the most for college graduates, less for the next 2 groups, and stayed the same for those without a high school diploma. Females also had a longer life expectancy than males in all groups, with the biggest difference in the high school groups (about 5.6 to 5.8 years), and the least among college graduates (3.1 years).

From Medical Xpress: US college graduates live an average of 11 years longer than those who never finish high school, study finds

Across more than 3,000 US counties, vast geographic differences with a widening gap were registered between the least and most educated, with a longer lifespan for those with a higher level of education. That's according to the latest analysis by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington's School of Medicine that was published in The Lancet Public Health. ...continue reading "Years of Education and Life Expectancy in the US"

Published on Leave a comment on The Plastics In Our Homes Are Toxic In A Fire
House fire Credit: Wikipedia

We all use plastic products in our daily lives. Our houses are usually full of plastics, especially modern houses. Examples: much furniture (e.g., engineered wood), upholstery fabrics (e.g., polyester), rugs (e.g., polyolefin), flooring (vinyl), foam in mattresses, synthetic fabric clothing, even the acrylic paint on our walls, and outdoor vinyl siding - it's all made with plastics from petrochemicals.

And when it burns in a fire, it's toxic and harmful to breathe.

Watch the video made by the UL Fire Safety Research Institute that show side- by-side burn comparisons between natural and synthetic furnished rooms. Pretty shocking! And yes, the all natural materials (e.g., wood, cotton) burned much slower and the smoke was less toxic than the synthetic materials. Flashover time (when escape becomes impossible) was under 5 minutes in the synthetic furnishing room and over 30 minutes in the natural furnishings room.

The following The Atlantic article sums up the dangers nicely. One vivid example is pointing out that most of our modern sofas are "basically blocks of gasoline". These are good reasons to consider using more natural materials in our homes (cotton, wood, glass, steel, etc.).

Excerpts from The Atlantic: What Happens When a Plastic City Burns

As flames rip through Los Angeles County, burning restaurants, businesses, and whole blocks of houses, it’s clear that the threat of urban fire has returned to the United States. But this time, the urban landscape is different: Modern homes are full of plastic, turning house fires into chemical-laced infernos that burn hotter, faster, and more toxic than their predecessors. ...continue reading "The Plastics In Our Homes Are Toxic In A Fire"

Published on Leave a comment on When Will Our Government Protect Us From Endocrine Disruptors and Harmful Pesticides?

Over the course of the past decade, while reading many, many studies and articles about the FDA and EPA (you know, the government agencies meant to protect us) I have become cynical. And depressed. The agencies are not doing a good job protecting ordinary people (us), especially from endocrine disruptors and pesticides. There is too much corruption and too much money involved, with the bottom line being that Big Business is protected and does as it wants.

One example is why paraquat is still used in the US. This pesticide is a weed-killer that researchers link to a wide variety of diseases, including Parkinson's disease. It is widely used in the US, but banned in more than 70 countries. The EPA won't take action, and keeps saying the evidence for harms is "weak" and "insufficient", and they'll have to reassess the pesticide. But neuroscientists say:

“We know from animal work—and this is convincing and consistent—that paraquat isn’t safe,” says Bas Bloem, a neurologist at Radboud University Medical Center. The compound can pass from the bloodstream to the brain, he notes, and kills dopaminergic neurons, the loss of which drives Parkinson’s; indeed, paraquat is used to create laboratory animals with Parkinson-like disease. It also enhances the buildup of a misfolded, toxic version of the protein alpha-synuclein that’s a hallmark of the disease."

This relationship between Big Business (Big $$) was summed up by Dr. Theo Colborn back in 2014: “Our government operates via the stakeholder approach,” says (Theo) Colborn, “where those who are creating the problem are invited to solve the problem.”  Yup.

Plastic duck containing endocrine disruptors

Theo Colborn was an absolutely amazing person. She is the main reason that endocrine disruptors are even being discussed these days. [Go read Our Stolen Future, published in 1997]. And, of course, Big Business (Big $$) went after her. But she (and others) persisted, and nowadays endocrine disruptors are taken very seriously by researchers and the general public.

Some good resources for up-to-date information about endocrine disruptors and pesticides: Collaborative About Health and the Environment (CHE) (up-to-date research, including research webinars), Silent Spring Institute, Environmental Working Group (EWG), PFAS Central, Beyond Pesticides (including their Daily News Blog), and Environmental Health News (EHN). ...continue reading "When Will Our Government Protect Us From Endocrine Disruptors and Harmful Pesticides?"

Published on Leave a comment on Fungi and Bacteria In The Sinus Microbiome

The sinus microbiome consists of bacteria, viruses, and fungi all coexisting in the sinuses. Research has long focused on how the bacteria in sinus microbiomes in people with chronic sinusitis is different than in healthy persons without sinusitis (and yes, there are differences). Differences in the mycobiome (the fungi) of the sinuses appear to also play a role in chronic sinusitis.

A few recent studies found that there are differences in the fungi living in the sinuses in those without sinusitis and those with sinusitis (but results varied among the studies). Whether fungi play a role in the development of sinusitis has long been debated. Additionally, when samples are taken with a swab compared to sinus tissue samples during surgery - the results are different.

Sinuses
Credit: Nat. Library of Medicine

In a recent study, researchers found differences in both the fungi (mycobiome), as well as bacteria, in persons with chronic sinusitis compared to healthy persons (the controls). There were differences in bacterial diversity (diminished diversity in those with chronic sinusitis), as well as the composition of the microbes. The researchers thought that fungal alterations can play a part in sinusitis.

By the way, when microbes in the sinuses are out of whack it is called dysbiosis. Researchers point out that the same microbes can be commensal or pathogenic (if numbers increase to high numbers) or have no effect on sinusitis.

Excerpts from The Laryngoscope: Fungal and Bacterial Microbiome in Sinus Mucosa of Patients with and without Chronic Rhinosinusitis

Abstract  Objectives - Dysbiosis of the sinonasal microbiome has been implicated in the pathogenesis of chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS). However, the mycobiome remains largely understudied, and microbial alterations associated with specific CRS subtypes have yet to be delineated. The objective of this study is to investigate the fungal and bacterial microbiome of sinus mucosa in CRS patients with and without nasal polyposis (CRSwNP and CRSsNP) versus healthy controls. ...continue reading "Fungi and Bacteria In The Sinus Microbiome"

Published on Leave a comment on Patient Experiences Worsen In Hospitals Acquired By Private Equity

Everyone reading this will say: Ah ha...of course. When profits come first, then patient care suffers. A recent study looked at 73 private-equity acquired hospitals compared to 293 hospitals that weren't, and found that the patient care experience and patient-staff responsiveness worsened in hospitals taken over and managed by private equity.

And with each additional year of private equity ownership, these measures further worsened. As the study authors noted: this is due to profit-driven changes made by private equity. One of the researchers noted: "The evidence to date suggests that when private equity takes over a hospital, things generally get worse for patients."

From Medical Xpress: Patient care declines after private equity buys hospitals, study finds

In a paper published in JAMA, health policy experts at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) report that patient care experience worsened after private equity (PE) acquisition of US hospitals, as did patient-reported staff responsiveness.

Rishi Wadhera, MD, MPP, Anjali Bhatla, MD, and colleagues demonstrated that patient care continued to worsen at PE-acquired hospitals with each additional year following acquisition relative to non-acquired hospitals, suggesting that profit-driven changes made by PE may have downstream effects that accumulate over time. ...continue reading "Patient Experiences Worsen In Hospitals Acquired By Private Equity"

Published on Leave a comment on Last Year Was the Warmest Year Since Global Records Began in 1850

Well, well... this is not a surprise. 2024 was the hottest year since temperature records began in 1850. And the second hottest year on record was 2023.

Unfortunately, this also means that we exceeded the goal of limiting temperature increases to 1.5 degrees C that was agreed to at the Paris Agreement in 2016. Remember that agreement? The goal was to keep temperature increases to no more than 1.5 degrees C over pre-industrial temperatures (as defined by the 1850 - 1900 average). But last year was 1.6 degrees C over pre-industrial levels.

It's been 48 years since the last time the world had a cooler year than average year. You can thank rising greenhouse emissions for the overall upward trend in heat.

Sooo....what will 2025 be like? Stay tuned.

Excerpts from Ars Technica: Everyone agrees: 2024 the hottest year since the thermometer was invented

Over the last 24 hours or so, the major organizations that keep track of global temperatures have released figures for 2024, and all of them agree: 2024 was the warmest year yet recorded, joining 2023 as an unusual outlier in terms of how rapidly things heated up. At least two of the organizations, the European Union's Copernicus and Berkeley Earth, place the year at about 1.6° C above pre-industrial temperatures, marking the first time that the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5° has been exceeded. ...continue reading "Last Year Was the Warmest Year Since Global Records Began in 1850"

Published on Leave a comment on Snot Transplants for Sinusitis?

There are 2 small studies that recently looked at the issue of snot transplants as a treatment for chronic sinusitis. The idea behind snot transplants or sinonasal microbiota transplants is similar to fecal transplants - it's a transplant containing the entire microbial community (fungi, bacteria, viruses) in the form of a sample of snot or nasal mucus from a healthy donor to a recipient with chronic sinusitis (sign of an unhealthy sinus microbiome).

This idea has huge potential as a treatment. The goal in a sinus snot transplant is to have the healthy donor's snot (the mucus) take over and change (engraftment) the recipient's unhealthy sinus microbiome. The hope is that this will restore a healthy sinus microbiome in the person with chronic sinusitis, resulting in sustained improvement in sinus health.

The results from the studies are definitely encouraging, but also a bit mixed. For example, there was sustained improvement (up to 180 days) in 2 out of 3 patients in the 2024 study, but why not the third person? Also, illness may appear in the recipient of the transplant (see patient narratives in the first study). Also, why did some people drop out after the first snot transplant in the 2022 study? In both small studies, most of the the healthy donors were the recipient's spouse or a close friend.

The one concern that everyone has is of the possibility of some unknown disease being transferred from the donor to the recipient. [Note: Post about the Swedish study before it started]

Excerpts from Dec. 2022 Allergy and Rhinology: Upper airway microbiome transplantation for patients with chronic rhinosinusitis

The study, involving patients with CRSsNP, was of an open pre-post interventional design and involved 13 days of antibiotics (amoxicillin/clavulanate 875 mg/125 mg three times daily or, in case of penicillin-allergy, clarithromycin 500 mg two times daily) followed by five daily upper airway microbiome transplants.....All patients had over several years (i.e., far longer than the time span of this study) failed repeatedly on medical therapy and had undergone endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS) with a minimum of bilateral middle meatus antrostomies/ethmoidectomies

3.1 Patient narratives and adverse events Three patients opted not to participate further after visit 1 (V1). The remaining 22 patients completed the trial. Eighteen reported airway symptoms such as cough, sore throat, blocked or runny nose, or common cold-like symptoms during or soon after the transplant procedure. Seven indicated gastrointestinal problems, mainly diarrhea. One patient developed acute purulent rhinosinusitis and pneumonia 34 days after the last transplant. One patient developed a urinary tract infection, and one was diagnosed with diabetes type 2 (2 weeks before V8). One patient developed fever and cough during, and one experienced sinusitis-like symptoms 5 days after the transplant series. The latter two incidents were considered potentially caused by the microbiome transplant series. ...continue reading "Snot Transplants for Sinusitis?"

Published on Leave a comment on Hospital Foods Can Be Very Unhealthy
Vanilla pudding

Well, well, well...it was a rocky holiday season. Lots of people got Covid, including myself. It hit everyone I know harder than expected, with symptoms much worse than with a flu virus.

Anyway, while visiting someone in a hospital I happened to be there when dinner was served. I was absolutely shocked that much of the hospital meal contained ultra-processed foods with absolutely garbage ingredients.  Artificial colors, high fructose corn syrup (e.g., ginger ale), etc.

This is what sick people are given? Food ingredients linked to gut inflammation and a number of health problems? Perhaps they're making sure they get lots of repeat business.

Vanilla pudding ingredients: Water, nonfat milk, sugar, modified corn starch, palm oil, salt, sodium stearoyl lactylate, disodium phosphate, natural and artificial flavors, yellow 5, yellow 6. (This was dessert.)

The Lemon Tea ingredients: Water, citric acid, instant tea powder, sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, caramel color, acesulfame-K, sucralose, natural flavors.