Project description:This is a prevalence study evaluating lower urinary tract, prolapse, bowel, and sexual symptoms in women with a colorectal disorder who are planning to undergo surgery.
The purpose of this study is to identify the number of women who complain of lower urinary tract and bowel problems, including frequency, urgency, urinary incontinence, fecal incontinence, pain with intercourse, and other sexual problems prior to undergoing surgical management for a colorectal disorder.
Project description:Despite much promise to overcome drug-resistant infections, clinical studies of bacteriophage anti-bacterial therapy have failed to show durable effectiveness. Although lysogeny plays an important role in bacterial physiology, its significance in diverse microbiomes remains under-studied. Here, we tested the hypotheses that 1) urinary microbiome phage populations switch to a higher relative proportion of temperate phages and 2) the activity of the phage recombination machinery (integration / excision / transposition) is higher during human urinary tract infections (UTIs) than in non-infected urinary tracts. Using human urine, model organisms, mass spectrometry, gene expression analysis, and the phage phenotype prediction model BACPHLIP, the results support our hypotheses at the functional protein and gene level. From a human health perspective, are temperate phages part of the problem and not the defenders we wished them to be? These data support the use of lysogenic phages as a therapeutic Trojan Horses.
Project description:<p><strong>BACKGROUND:</strong> Protein undernutrition is prevalent mainly among elderly people, and it could develop diseases such as sarcopenia. Urinary metabolites may become biomarkers reflecting protein undernutrition, but this has been insufficiently investigated.</p><p><strong>OBJECTIVE:</strong> The purpose of this study was to identify novel urinary metabolites as biomarker candidates responsive to protein undernutrition.</p><p><strong>METHODS:</strong> Adult male Wistar rats were fed an AIN-93 M diet [14% casein, control (CT) diet] or an AIN-93 M-based isocaloric diet [5% casein, low protein (LP) diet] for 4 weeks. 1H nuclear magnetic resonance metabolomic analysis was performed on urine samples weekly and on plasma and liver samples at week 4 to identify metabolites that respond to protein undernutrition. Liver samples were also subjected to mRNA microarray and quantitative PCR analyses at week 4 to investigate alterations of the gene expressions responsive to protein undernutrition.</p><p><strong>RESULTS:</strong> Urinary taurine levels were significantly lower in the LP group than in the CT group (79.7% lower) at week 1, and remained constant until week 4. Hepatic taurine level and gene expression level of cysteine dioxygenase type 1, the rate-limiting enzyme for taurine biosynthesis, were also significantly lower in the LP group than in the CT group (81.1% and 32.5% lower, respectively). Urinary trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) levels were significantly higher in the LP group than in the CT group (49.7% higher) at week 2, and remained constant until week 4. Hepatic TMAO level was also higher in the LP group than in the CT group (81.2% higher). Hepatic gene expression levels of flavin-containing monooxygenase 1 and 5, the enzymes for TMAO biosynthesis, were also significantly higher in the LP group than in the CT group (61.6% and 311.8% higher, respectively).</p><p><strong>CONCLUSIONS:</strong> Urinary taurine and TMAO levels substantially respond to LP diet ingestion, and may act as non-invasive biomarker candidates to detect protein undernutrition.</p>