Category Biology/Biotechnology

One in four new breast cancers and one in five colon cancers in Canada attributed to alcohol. A new study from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), published in the journal Lancet Oncology, has found an association between alcohol and a substantially higher risk of several forms of cancer, including breast, colon, and oral cancers. Increased risk was evident even among light to moderate drinkers (up to two drinks a day), who represented 1 in 7 of all new cancers in 2020 and more than 100,000 cases worldwide.

In Canada, alcohol use was linked to 7,000 new cases of cancer in 2020, including 24 per cent of breast cancer cases, 20 per cent of colon cancers, 15 per cent of rectal cancers, and 13 per cent of oral and liver cancers.

A diet rich in fermented foods enhances the diversity of gut microbes and decreases molecular signs of inflammation, according to researchers at the Stanford School of Medicine.

In a clinical trial, 36 healthy adults were randomly assigned to a 10-week diet that included either fermented or high-fiber foods. The two diets resulted in different effects on the gut microbiome and the immune system.

Eating foods such as yogurt, kefir, fermented cottage cheese, kimchi and other fermented vegetables, vegetable brine drinks, and kombucha tea led to an increase in overall microbial diversity, with st...

Certain metabolites of bacteria from the intestine make immune cells more aggressive as a new study conducted by scientists reveals. The findings could help improve cancer therapies.

It is believed to be involved in the development of chronic inflammatory intestinal diseases, to trigger diabetes, to be responsible for obesity, even neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s could have their causes here — not to mention depressions and autistic disorders. We are talking about the microbiome — the vast collection of bacteria in the human gut. It is estimated that each person carries around 100 trillion bacterial cells in their digestive tract, belonging to several thousand species.

Scientists at the Universities of Würzburg and Marburg have now succeeded for ...

Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have found a vital mechanism, previously thought to have disappeared as mammals evolved, that helps protect mammalian stem cells from RNA viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 and Zika virus. The scientists suggest this could one day be exploited in the development of new antiviral treatments.

On infecting a host, a virus enters cells in order to replicate. For most cells in mammals the first line of protection are proteins, called interferons. Stem cells, however, lack the ability to trigger an interferon response and there has been uncertainty about how they protect themselves.

In their study, publishe...