Hirudo medicinalis, the medicinal leech, usually carries in its digestive tract a pure culture of Aeromonas veronii bv. sobria. Such specificity is unusual for digestive tracts that are normally colonized by a complex microbial consortium. Important questions for the symbiotic interaction and for the medical application after microvascular surgery are whether other bacteria can proliferate or a...

1. Current theory suggests that by responding to offspring food solicitation, or begging, parents improve the efficiency by which they convert parental investment into offspring fitness. However, the proximate mechanisms of this conversion are not entirely clear. One potential function of responding to begging is to maintain feeding regularity. Feeding at regular time intervals may improve offs...

This work has mainly investigated the influence of the solvent on the nanoparticles distribution in digestive ripening. The experiments suggested that the solvents played a key role in digestive ripening of Au nanoparticles (Au NPs). For the benzol solvents, the resulting size distribution of Au NPs was inversely related to the solvent polarity. It may be interpreted by the low Gibbs free energ...

Bile acids (BAs) are not only digestive surfactants but also important cell signaling molecules, which stimulate several signaling pathways to regulate some important biological processes. The bile-acid-activated nuclear receptor, farnesoid X receptor (FXR), plays a pivotal role in regulating bile acid, lipid and glucose homeostasis as well as in regulating the inflammatory responses, barrier f...

Digestive fistulas are a major complication after digestive surgery. Anastomotic leakage increases the hospitalization time, the prognosis and survival rate after colorectal surgical interventions. The factors involved are either systemic (determined by the patients' co-morbidities), or local (vicious surgical technique or the injuries produced by the disease that requires the anastomosis). Alt...

Caseinomacropeptide (CMP) is a 64-amino-acid-residue peptide which is released from kappa-casein by gastric proteinases. This review sums up the knowledge concerning its effects on the digestive function. Part 1 recalls the origin and heterogeneity of CMP. Here we underline that there are various forms of CMP which differ by their glycosylation level and genetic mutation. Consequently the forms...

The burden of care on acute public hospitals pertaining to Diseases of the digestive system and Procedures on the digestive system in Ireland was estimated using hospital discharge data for 2006 and population projections for 2021 and 2031. Age-specific rates derived from 2006 acute hospital discharge data and census figures for the same year were applied to population projections for 2021 and ...

Each day, a large amount of different kinds of digestive enzymes are produced by the pancreas and discharged into the gut to digest the food [1, 2]. Among these enzymes, those such as amylase are made in the pancreas as the active form. However, digestive enzymes such as trypsin and chymotrypsin are initially created in pancreas in the form of non-active zymogens as trypsinogen and chymotrypsin...