Disinfectant and superbugs

This is very scary news. It continues to prey on my mind.

Triclosan, a widely used disinfectant, may be contributing to the rise of drug-resistant bacteria, reports LiveScience.com. The antimicrobial agent has been banned from household soaps in the U.S. and European Union over concerns about its safety and effectiveness. But triclosan is still added to hospital soaps and many other household products, including toothpaste, cosmetics, and toys. When researchers at the University of Birmingham in England conducted lab tests on E. coli, they found that when the bacteria mutated to become resistant to powerful quinolone antibiotics, they also became more resistant to triclosan. “We think that bacteria are tricked into thinking they are always under attack and are then primed to deal with other threats, including triclosan,” says researcher Mark Webber. “The worry is that this might happen in reverse and triclosan exposure might encourage growth of antibiotic-resistant strains.”

Taken from the July 21, 2017 edition of The Week Magazine.

Using Viruses to Kill Super-bacteria

I continue to be amazed and horrified by this development in our heath system. And I always think about this wonderful solution found in England using an ancient recipe.

In the intensifying fight against superbugs, researchers are turning to “phage therapy”—a century-old medical technique that predates antibiotics by 25 years. During World War I, microbiologists discovered the existence of viruses that essentially infect and destroy bacteria. While early experiments showed that these “bacteriophages” could be used to treat infections, they were quickly superseded by antibiotics in the 1940s. With the recent rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria, however, scientists are giving phage therapy another look. Bacteriophages are ubiquitous—found everywhere from sewage to the human gut—and every type of bacteria is thought to be susceptible to at least one of them. The challenge is finding the right phage-bacteria combination. The process currently involves covering the target bacteria with different viruses, monitoring which parts of the bacteria die, and then cultivating the relevant phage. That currently takes five to 10 days, which would be too long to save many patients—but scientists believe it can be streamlined. The Food and Drug Administration has granted doctors permission to use phage therapy in at least four life-threatening infections. “We desperately need something to treat infections resistant to antibiotics,” bacteriophage expert Carl Merril tells The Washington Post. “We are turning back to these viruses, but with new knowledge and new technology.”

Taken from the July 21, 2017 edition of The Week Magazine.

A good week for:

Digging for treasure, after scientists at several U.S. universities revealed that eating boogers can improve dental hygiene and overall good health, thanks to their “rich reservoir” of good bacteria.

Ahhhhhhhh! Holy crap. The benefits of good bacteria, not to be overlooked, though if this becomes a health trend I am not jumping on that bandwagon.

And, ahhhh, several US Universities? Is this how we spend our research dollars? And how did they get several universities to join the studies? That doesn't make sense. I am sure it was all clinically done, but still.

Taken from the May 19, 2017 print edition of The Week Magazine.

Furry Pets, Healthier Babies

Catching up on my reading:

The therapeutic value of pets is well-known, but a new Canadian study takes it to another level, suggesting that women with animals have healthier babies. Researchers asked the mothers of more than 700 children about pets they owned during pregnancy and for three months after delivery. They found that babies exposed to furry animals—especially dogs—have significantly higher levels of Ruminococcus and Oscillospira, two beneficial gut bacteria associated with a lower risk for allergies and obesity, ScienceDaily​.com reports. The researchers explain that pet bacteria enhance a newborn’s resistance to those chronic health issues. Prenatal pet exposure also reduces the risk that mothers will pass vaginal group B strep (GBS)—linked to sepsis, pneumonia, and meningitis—to children during delivery. Eventually, a “dog in a pill” may be developed to help confer these health benefits, predicts study author Anita Kozyrskyj. “It’s not far-fetched that the pharmaceutical industry will try to create a supplement of these microbiomes,” she says, “much like was done with probiotics.”

From the April 28th print edition of The Week Magazine.

Happy Mother's Day!

The Superbug-Fighting Weed

From my favorite news source on March 3rd...

An invasive shrub known as the Brazilian peppertree could be a new weapon in the fight against antibiotic-resistant superbugs, reports WashingtonPost.com. A relative of poison ivy indigenous to South America, the Brazilian peppertree is the scourge of homeowners across the southern U.S., Florida in particular. But traditional healers in the Amazon have been using its bright red berries to treat skin infections for centuries, and researchers from the University of Iowa and Emory University believe the plant may contain a substance that effectively neutralizes methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The team infected mice with the bacteria and treated some of them with Brazilian peppertree extract. While the untreated mice developed skin lesions, those who were given the plant compound did not. “It essentially disarms the MRSA bacteria, preventing it from excreting the toxins it uses as weapons to damage tissues,” explains Cassandra Quave, an ethnobotanist at Emory. “The body’s normal immune system then stands a better chance of healing a wound.” The findings could lead to new ways of controlling antibiotic resistance and treating MRSA infections, which claimed 11,000 lives in the U.S. in 2011.

And here we are, wiping out all sorts of animals and plants... Makes you wonder when killing off a species what benefits it might have brought to the human race. Certainly this has science behind it, rather than erectile dysfunction and the Rhino horn from the French zoo. One of very few left in the world.... (Though I did once hear that they might try and grow a white rhino embryo in the black rhino.)

We know this has been a subject of interest for me... wonder what is happening with all these discoveries. I don't ever want to find out first hand, though. But, recently we discussed superbugs which have no cure. How does this effect that situation? (Are these scientists talking to one another? They better be!) And we spoke of the very amusing story here and here.

The above blurb was taken from here.

A deadly superbug

Why are we not more scared of this? Seems like we are sticking our heads in the sand.

I wonder if the axe-wielding microbiologist and James Johnson have heard of one another. One hopes that they do research and eventually find one another.

A rare, drug-resistant superbug impervious to all 26 antibiotics available in the U.S. has claimed the life of a woman in Nevada. The patient, in her 70s, had been hospitalized with a broken leg in India, where drug-resistant bacteria are more common. She developed an infection in her blood, which turned out to be Klebsiella pneumoniae, a type of gut bacteria from a family of superbugs. Back in the U.S., doctors found that the bacteria were resistant to all available antibiotics, even those usually reserved as a last resort for multidrug-resistant bacteria. Within two months, the woman had died of multiple organ failure and sepsis. Health officials say her death is a grim reminder that drug-resistant bacteria are evolving, and that common infections could one day become untreatable. “People keep asking me, ‘How close are we to going off the cliff?’” James Johnson, professor of infectious diseases medicine at the University of Minnesota, tells NPR.org. “Come on, people. We’re off the cliff. It’s already happening. People are dying.

Taken from the February 3rd edition of The Week.

C-Section babies at risk

I was under the impression that this guy's wife - name not mentioned here - was the lead on this information. I learned about her, Martin Blaser and Rob Knight when I took a course on the Human Microbiome through Coursera.

Seems we also discussed how the microbiome can effect your mood here.

Though births by caesarean section are often medically necessary, they can be harmful to a child’s long-term health, the Los Angeles Times reports. Babies who do not pass through the birth canal miss out on beneficial bacteria that help their immune systems develop and shape their microbiomes—the collection of microorganisms dwelling in and on the body. Consequently, those children are more vulnerable to metabolic and immune disorders, such as asthma, type 1 diabetes, and celiac disease. A research team at New York University may have found a remedy, however. Swabbing C-section newborns with vaginal fluids from their mothers immediately after birth provided them with some of those key missing microbes, including Lactobacillus and Bacteroides, which train the immune system to recognize and preserve other helpful bacteria. As a result, the infants’ overall microbiomes more closely resembled those of babies born vaginally. “This study shows we can restore, at least partially, the microbiome of the mother to the baby,” says researcher Rob Knight. “What we don’t know yet is how it reflects long-term health.”

Taken from the February 19, 2016 edition of The Week Magazine.

The surprising benefits of thumb sucking

Just another example of what we have done to ourselves by being too clean. When I was a child, it was never a discussion about germs - it was a discussion about giving yourself buck teeth. Is that an old wives' tale?

Kids are often urged to stop biting their nails or sucking their thumbs because their fingers are teeming with germs. But new research suggests these “bad” habits could actually reduce children’s risk of developing allergies, reports The Washington Post. The findings support the “hygiene hypothesis” of allergies, which contends that exposure to microbes early in life educates and strengthens the immune system; when kids aren’t exposed to enough germs, that “priming” process doesn’t occur and their immune systems overreact to new substances. Researchers in New Zealand put this theory to the test by monitoring the oral habits of more than 1,000 ­children from birth to adulthood and conducting skin-prick tests to identify those who suffered from allergies. They found that 49 percent of those who weren’t thumb-suckers or nail-biters as kids eventually developed allergies to things like pets, grass, and dust mites. But allergies were found in only 31 percent of those who both bit their fingernails and sucked their thumbs when they were younger, and in 38 percent of those who did one or the other. The study’s author, Malcolm Sears, says that doesn’t mean parents should encourage kids to bite

Taken from the July 29th edition of the Week Magazine.

Why bacteria are becoming drug-resistant

And here we go again... in the news, again. We are destined to kill ourselves with the superbugs.



Drug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria

People suffering from bronchitis, flu, and other ailments often leave their doctor’s office with a prescription for ­antibiotics—even though in many cases it will do nothing to help them. Nearly one-third of the antibiotics taken in this country are unnecessary, says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), despite decades of warnings that overprescribing is helping fuel the alarming surge in drug-resistant superbugs. All told, the study found, some 47 million unwarranted antibiotic prescriptions are being written out each year. Many of them are for viral illnesses the drugs can’t treat, such as colds and sore throats, or for sinus infections, typically caused by fungi that aren’t affected by antibiotics. The researchers say it’s likely they’ve even underestimated the problem, because they didn’t consider antibiotics doled out over the phone and in urgent-care centers, or cases in which doctors prescribed the wrong antibiotic to treat a genuine bacterial infection. The danger of overprescribing is that once bacteria are exposed to an antibiotic, they start learning how to outsmart it, rendering that drug less effective or even useless. More than 2 million people a year are infected by drug-resistant germs, and some 23,000 die of their infections. If inappropriate antibiotic use continues, CDC Director Tom Frieden tells NBCNews.com, “we’ll lose the most powerful tool we have to fight life-threatening infections.”
THE WEEK
May 20, 2016

Whole grains boost longevity

Photo and aricle taken from The Week Magazine - July 1, 2016 edition.

At least they are not advocating for white flour... and I suppose wild rice isn't mentioned because it is a seed, rather than a grain. I still find that I am happier without the grains in general... though I did just make some sourdough bread with kefir as the liquid and I ground my own wheat berries in my nutribullet. I also let the dough rise for over 24 hours. I am *hoping* the natural yeast and other microbes digested some of the grains so that it is easier for me to digest if I should indulge in a slice or two with grass fed butter.

Eating whole grains like oats, quinoa, and brown rice can help you live longer, new research suggests. A meta-analysis of 14 long-term studies involving nearly 800,000 men and women found the people who ate three or more servings of whole grains (48 grams) each day had a 20 percent lower risk of dying early than those who ate none, NBCNews .com reports. Having three servings of whole grains per day was also associated with a 25 percent lower risk of death from heart disease and a 14 percent lower risk of death from cancer than just one daily serving. “There are many biological pathways that would explain why whole grains are beneficial,” says study author Qi Sun of Harvard University’s School of Public Health. Unlike white or refined grains that have been milled and stripped of their nutrients, whole grains contain the entire grain kernel, which provides fiber, iron, and several B vitamins. Fiber improves cholesterol levels, helps insulin sensitivity, and promotes satiety—the feeling of being full after eating—which reduces the risk for obesity-related health issues and stroke.

Cheese as medicine

I took this image from here.

OMG, in "Cooked" one of the scientists studying the rinds of cheeses suggested that a day may come, when we understand the microbiome better, that medicine may come in the form of cheese! How brilliant is that? Killed off all your gut bacteria? Just eat Camembert for two weeks and then top it off with a little L'Explorateur. Like the belly button beer, maybe they will harvest some of your gut microbes before you take that course of antibiotics or chemo, harvest some additional microbes from your healthy child and then blend with some rennet and raw milk and voilà, you are better than before.

If, as suggested in a podcast I listened to years ago, the combination of microbes (or lack thereof) in our bellies gives us Parkinsons or MS, we might eat some cheese from a healthy donor to clear it right up. I suppose some of the cheeses resulting from this engineered cheese medicine might task more revolting than some of the cheeses considered delicacies around the world.

Looking to find some links to share I came across this criticism of Michael Pollan.  I still remain a fan and I do believe that what we eat is the basis of all our health problems, so I really think we should do what we can to get back to eating the way he suggests, regardless of the time/money because it is cheaper in the long run. I suppose if you push off the cost of health care to the government then the scales are stacked against investing in the food you eat for your own health.

Is obesity CONTAGIOUS? Spores of bacteria from the gut's of fat people 'could spread to healthy individuals'

Hmmm... the hype of this article is that obesity might be contagious, but the thrust is that we might be able to learn some more about the microbiota and get some tailor-made medicine out of it - and the end of fecal transplants! So, whereas the media went negative, this looks positive.

Keep eating your fermented foods to keep up the health of your microbiota!

Obesity could spread from person to person in a similar way to the contagious bug, C.difficile, a new study has suggested.

A growing body of evidence has placed increasing importance on the balance of bacteria in our gut.

Imbalances in the gut microbiome can contribute to a number of complex conditions, including obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome and allergies, studies have shown.

But, for the first time, scientists believe traces of the bacteria can survive outside the body, raising the possibility that it could be ingested.

If that bacteria disrupts a person's gut microbiome in a negative way, it is possible, the researchers say, for these complex diseases to manifest themselves.

A team from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute turned their attention to the proportion of bacteria that form spores within the gut.

Spores are a form of bacterial hibernation, that allows some bacteria to remain dormant for long periods of time.

Researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute discovered approximately one third of the gut microbiota from a healthy person produced spores that allow bacteria to survive in open air and potentially move between people.

They said this provides a means of microbiota transmission that has not been considered before.

And, furthermore, the authors suggest it could imply that health and certain diseases could be passed, not just through human genetics, but also via the microbiome.

Dr Trevor Lawley, group leader at the Sanger Institute, said: 'Being able to cast light on this microbial "dark matter" has implications for the whole of biology and how we consider health.

'We will be able to isolate the microbes from people with a specific disease, such as infection, cancers or autoimmune diseases, and study these microbes in a mouse model to see what happens.

'Studying our "second" genome, that of the microbiota, will lead to a huge increase in our understanding of basic biology and the relationship between our gut bacteria and health and disease.'

This research will allow scientists to start to create tailor-made treatment with specific beneficial bacteria, they said.

Research in this field has expanded greatly in recent years, with the intestinal microbiome being labeled the 'forgotten organ', such is its importance to human health.

Around two per cent of a person's body weight is linked to bacteria.

Many of these bacteria are sensitive to oxygen and are difficult to culture in the laboratory, so until now it has been very difficult to isolate and study them.

Hilary Browne from the Sanger Institute, explained: 'It has become increasingly evident that microbial communities play a large role in human health and disease.

'By developing a new process to isolate gastrointestinal bacteria, we were able to sequence their genomes to understand more about their biology.

'We can also store them for long periods of time making them available for further research.'
Antibiotics wipe out our gut bacteria - killing both the pathogen targets and the beneficial bacteria too.

There is then the potential for less desirable bacteria, such as those with antibiotic resistance, to repopulate the gut faster than the beneficial bacteria, leading to further health issues, such as Clostridium difficile infection.

Current treatment for C. difficile infection can involve transplants of faeces from healthy people, to repopulate the gut.

However this treatment is far from ideal.

Using the library of new bacteria, Dr Lawley and his team are hoping to create a pill, containing a rationally selected, defined mix of bacteria, which could be taken by patients and replace faecal transplants.

Dr Sam Forster from the Sanger Institute and Hudson Institute of Medical Research in Australia said: 'The extensive database of genomes we have generated from these bacteria is also essential for studying which bacteria are present or absent in people with gastrointestinal conditions.

'Now we can start to design mixtures of therapeutics candidates for use in these diseases.'

The findings are published in Nature.

Using a Mother’s Microbes to Protect Cesarean Babies

Fascinating stuff. Dr. Dominguez-Bello was a lecturer in my course on the human microbiome on Coursera.

Clearly I would rather get my microbiome from Mom, not the 'less-scrubbed' areas in the delivery room. Ick. 

I took this article, written by Sandra Blakeslee, from the New York Times on February 1st.

The first germs to colonize a newborn delivered vaginally come almost exclusively from its mother. But the first to reach an infant born by cesarean section come mostly from the environment — particularly bacteria from inaccessible or less-scrubbed areas like lamps and walls, and skin cells from everyone else in the delivery room.

That difference, some experts believe, could influence a child’s lifelong health. Now, in the first study of its kind, researchers on Monday confirmed that a mother’s beneficial microbes can be transferred, at least partially, from her vagina to her baby after a C-section.

The small proof-of-principle study suggests a new way to inoculate babies, said Dr. Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, an associate professor of medicine at New York University and lead author of the report, published on Monday in Nature Medicine.

“The study is extremely important,” said Dr. Jack Gilbert, a microbial ecologist at Argonne National Laboratory who did not take part in the work. “Just understanding that it’s possible is exciting.”

But it will take further studies following C-section babies for many years to know to what degree, if any, the method protects them from immune and metabolic problems, he said.

Some epidemiological studies have suggested that C-section babies may have an elevated risk for developing immune and metabolic disorders, including Type 1 diabetes, allergies, asthma and obesity.

Scientists have theorized that these children may be missing key bacteria known to play a large role in shaping the immune system from the moment of birth onward. To replace these microbes, some parents have turned to a novel procedure called vaginal microbial transfer.

A mother’s vaginal fluids — loaded with one such essential bacterium, lactobacillus, that helps digest human milk — are collected before surgery and swabbed all over the infant a minute or two after birth.

An infant’s first exposure to microbes may educate the early immune system to recognize friend from foe, Dr. Dominguez-Bello said.

Friendly bacteria, like lactobacilli, are tolerated as being like oneself. Those from hospital ventilation vents or the like may be perceived as enemies and be attacked.

These early microbial interactions may help set up an immune system that recognizes “self” from “non-self” for the rest of a person’s life, Dr. Dominguez-Bello said.

In the United States, about one in three babies are delivered by C-section, a rate that has risen dramatically in recent decades. Some hospitals perform the surgery on nearly seven in ten women delivering babies.

An ideal C-section rate for low-risk births should be no more than 15 percent, according to the World Health Organization.

Dr. Dominguez-Bello’s study involved 18 babies born at the University of Puerto Rico hospital in San Juan, where she recently worked. Seven were born vaginally and 11 by elective C-section. Of the latter, four were swabbed with the mother’s vaginal microbes and seven were not.

Microbes were collected on a folded sterile piece of gauze that was dipped in a saline solution and inserted into each mother’s vagina for one hour before surgery. As the operations began, the gauze was pulled out and placed in a sterile collector.

One to two minutes after the babies were delivered and put under a neonatal lamp, researchers swabbed each infant’s lips, face, chest, arms, legs, back, genitals and anal region with the damp gauze. The procedure took 15 seconds.

Dr. Dominguez-Bello and her colleagues then tracked the composition of microbes by taking more than 1,500 oral, skin and anal samples from the newborns, as well as vaginal samples from the mothers, over the first month after birth.

For the first few days, ambient skin bacteria from the delivery room predominated in the mouths and on the skin of C-section babies who were not swabbed, Dr. Dominguez-Bello said.

But in terms of their bacterial colonies, the infants swabbed with the microbes closely resembled vaginally delivered babies, she found, especially in the first week of life. They were all covered with lactobacilli.

Gut bacteria in both C-section groups, however, were less abundant than that found in the vaginally delivered babies.

Anal samples from the swabbed group, oddly, contained the highest abundance of bacteria usually found in the mouth.

The results show the complexity of labor, said Dr. Alexander Khoruts, a microbial expert and associate professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota. “It cannot be simplified to a neat, effortless passage of the infant through the birth canal,” he said.

As the month progressed, the oral and skin microbes of all infants began to resemble normal adult patterns, Dr. Dominguez-Bello said. But fecal bacteria did not, probably because of breast or formula feeding and the absence of solid foods.

The transfer fell short of full vaginal birth-like colonization for two reasons, Dr. Dominguez-Bello said. Compared to infants who spent time squeezed inside the birth canal, those who were swabbed got less exposure to their mother’s microbes.

And all infants delivered by C-section were exposed to antibiotics, which also may have reduced the number and variety of bacteria colonizing them.

A larger study of vaginal microbial transfer is underway at N.Y.U., Dr. Dominguez-Bello said. Eighty-four mothers have participated so far.

Infants delivered both by C-section and vaginally will be followed for one year to look for differences in the treated and untreated groups and to look for complications. Thus far the swabbing has proved entirely safe.

The procedure is not yet recommended by professional medical societies, said Dr. Sara Brubaker, a specialist in maternal and fetal medicine at N.Y.U. Until more is known, physicians are hesitant to participate.

“But it has hit the lay press,” she said. “Patients come in and ask for it. They are doing it themselves.”

Dr. Brubaker is one of them. When her daughter was born three and a half months ago, she arranged to have her baby swabbed.

A superbug that defies all antibiotics

And here we go again.
I do like the idea that we can circle back to older antibacterials to save ourselves, as we discussed here.

Is this Mother Earth ridding herself of a major pest?

Bacteria that can resist even the most powerful antibiotics are infecting livestock and people in China, raising the grave possibility that untreatable diseases could spread around the world. These superbugs are especially worrying because they have a mechanism that transfers drug resistance to other strains of bacteria. If their resistance spreads, it could trigger an antibiotic apocalypse, leaving doctors helpless to treat deadly infections. Until now, drug-resistant bacteria have remained susceptible to an antibiotic called colistin. But apparently this “last resort” drug has been so overused on livestock that some bacteria have developed a mutant gene to resist it. Researchers in China discovered the gene, known as MCR-1, in pigs and found that it had spread to a handful of hospital patients. What makes the mutation especially dangerous is that it is found on plasmids, DNA molecules that move freely between different bacterial strains. By riding on plasmids, the resistance gene can readily pass between common bacteria, such as E. coli, that cause pneumonia and bloodstream infections. Microbiologists warn that it may only be a matter of time before universal drug resistance is widespread and existing antibiotics are obsolete. “This isn’t going to happen overnight, and the number of infections that can only be treated by colistin is still relatively small,” study co-author Jim Spenser tells CBSNews.com. “But it highlights the urgent need for new treatments for these organisms and the limited time that we have to develop them.”

Taken from the December 11th edition of the Week Magazine.

What happens when you combine an axe-wielding microbiologist and a disease-obsessed historian?

Ha! On a recent 12 hour drive I listened to a podcast from Radiolab - one of my all time favorite radio shows - and Jad and Robert were discussing one of my favorite subjects: microbes. BUT, they were doing a story on the two scientists who discovered that an ancient medicine was the only cure for some of the super bugs that modern humans have 'created'. And, by way of this podcast, I get truly wonderful and never anticipated answers to some of the questions I posed in my previous post. Another example of truth is stranger than fiction; you can't make this shit up. Just wait and listen to the podcast.

Jad and Robert had a different, intriguing, question at the conclusion of their report... Because microbes evolve so quickly, maybe our old medicines will work again because the microbe's resistance to *that* medicine has evolved out because their is a new antibacterial to develop a resistance to.

In any event, the podcast gave the background story to the scientist's collaboration to find this cure made of onion, garlic, ox bile and wine. So fabulous. We discussed this story here. You can listen to the wonderful podcast here.

Bacteria linked to schizophrenia

Holy Shit.

Suggests we should kep our mouths clean. I read somewhere, probably here in Dr. Blaser book, that as we have cured ulcers, the amount of esophageal cancer has increased... creating the speculation that perhaps the bacteria that caused the ulcers in fact protected us from esophageal disorders and cancers.

Let's enjoy a variety of foods and make sure we eat fermented vegetables!

Copied from the September 18th print edition of the Week Magazine:

The origins of schizophrenia are mysterious, but new research suggests a possible connection between the devastating mental disorder and microorganisms found in the mouth and throat. A team from George Washington University analyzed viruses, bacteria, and fungi in 32 people, half of whom were diagnosed with schizophrenia, MedicalDaily.com reports. Those who had the disease displayed levels of lactic acid bacteria, which originate in the gut and travel to the mouth and throat, that were at least 400 times higher than people in the control group. The findings add to a growing body of evidence that the trillions of bacteria that colonize the body may influence the brain and behavior. Larger studies are needed to confirm an association between gut and throat bacteria and schizophrenia, but “the results are quite intriguing,” says co-author Keith Crandall. He said the research could lead to earlier diagnoses and new treatments for the illness, which afflicts 3.5 million Americans.