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Maria Branyas, then age four, sitting on a wooden fence with her family in 1911 in New Orleans. (Credit: Arxiu de la família Branyas Morera - Own work, Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons) ================================================================ Study suggests Maria Branyas Morera’s daily yogurt habit could have shaped her tremendously healthy gut microbiome ========================================================================= In A Nutshell * Maria Branyas Morera lived to 117, yet DNA methylation tests showed her cells acting about 23 years younger than her chronological age. * Her daily yogurt habit coincided with unusually high levels of Bifidobacterium, a gut microbe common in younger people, and extremely low inflammation...

Research has found the first clear evidence that the "good" gut bacteria Bifidobacterium breve in pregnant mothers regulates the placenta's production of hormones critical for a healthy pregnancy. In a study in mice, the researchers compared the placentas of mice with no gut bacteria to those of mice with Bifidobacterium breve in their gut during pregnancy. Pregnant mice without Bifidobacterium breve in their gut had a higher rate of complications including fetal growth restriction and fetal low blood sugar, and increased fetal loss. This gut bacteria seems to play a crucial role in prompting the placenta to produce pregnancy hormones...

Researchers from Spain have identified a strain of probiotic bacteria that may be useful in treating ulcers caused by Helicobacter pylori. They report their findings in the February 2011 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. "H. pylori is considered one of the major risk factors underlying the development of gastritis and gastric and duodenal ulcers," write the researchers. "Currently, antibiotic-based treatment for H. pylori infection is neither sufficient nor satisfactory, with the most successful treatments reaching 75 to 90% eradication rates. The use of probiotics is a potentially promising tool to prevent H. pylori." According to an expert...