Throughout evolution, both helminths and bacteria have inhabited our intestines. As intestinal helminths and bacteria inhabit the same environmental niche, it is likely that these organisms interact with, and impact on, each other. In addition, intestinal helminths are well known to alter intestinal physiology, permeability, mucous secretion and the production of antimicrobial peptides - all of...

Virulent microorganisms, such as pathogenic bacteria and viruses, are recognized by pattern recognition receptors (PRRs), including toll-like receptors (TLRs) and nucleotide-binding oligomerization-domain proteins (NODs), and induce inflammatory responses in mammalian hosts. Conversely, commensal bacteria and probiotics, which symbiotically confer health benefits on the host organisms, can lodg...

Mutations in the Nod2 gene are among the strongest genetic risk factors in the pathogenesis of ileal Crohn's disease, but the exact contributions of Nod2 to intestinal mucosal homeostasis are not understood. Here we show that Nod2 plays an essential role in controlling commensal bacterial flora in the intestine. Analysis of intestinal bacteria from the terminal ilea of Nod2-deficient mice showe...

Inflammatory bowel disease, inclusive of Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, consists of immunologically mediated disorders involving the microbiota in the gastrointestinal tract. Lavender oil is a traditional medicine used to relieve many gastrointestinal disorders. The goal of this study was to examine the therapeutic effects of the essential oil obtained from a novel lavender cultivar, L...

BACKGROUND Biofilms are characteristic of some chronic or recurrent infections and this mode of growth tends to reduce treatment efficacy. Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is associated with a high rate of recurrent symptomatic disease. The presence and behaviour of C. difficile within intestinal biofilms remains largely unexplored, but may factor in recurrent infection. METHODS A triple...

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Convincing evidence from both animal models and the study of patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) implicates the intestinal microflora in the initiation and maintenance of the inflammatory processes in this condition. Despite this, no specific pathogen has been identified as causal and the disease is widely believed to occur as the result of a genetically determined, but abnormal immune respon...

An improved understanding of how intestinal bacteria cause disease has become increasingly important because of the emergence of new enteric pathogens, increasing threats of drug resistance, and a growing awareness of their importance in malnutrition and diarrhea. Reviewed here are the varied ways that intestinal bacteria cause disease, which provide fundamental lessons about microbial pathogen...

probiotics are live cultures of microbes; often lactic acid bacteria, but also some other species, which when fed to animals, improve their health and growth through altering the intestinal microbial balance. in the present research, healthy chickens’ gastrointestinal (gi) tracts were screened for the presence of lactic acid bacteria with probiotic properties. the probiotic properties of the is...