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Examining the correlation between Massa Medicata Fermentata and Crohn’s disease: Implications for treatment and patient safety

Wang et al. | Sep 15, 2025

Examining the correlation between Massa Medicata Fermentata and Crohn’s disease: Implications for treatment and patient safety

Crohn’s disease is a chronic inflammatory bowel condition with symptoms like abdominal pain, fatigue, diarrhea, and malnutrition. Though there's no cure, various treatments help manage it. This study explored the potential impact of Massa Medicata Fermentata (MMF), a fermented Chinese herbal medicine containing Saccharomyces cerevisiae, on Crohn’s disease.

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Relationship between p62 and learning behavior in male and female mice deficient in hippocampal folliculin

Guvenir et al. | Jun 10, 2025

Relationship between p62 and learning behavior in male and female mice deficient in hippocampal folliculin
Image credit: Robina Weermeijer

Here the authors hypothesized that reducing folliculin (FLCN) might affect p62 protein levels in the dorsal hippocampus of mice, given their potential functional connection and p62's role in neurodegenerative diseases. Their study, using western blots and a two-way ANOVA on young wild-type mice, found that p62 levels correlated with FLCN expression, but ultimately concluded there's no evidence of a functional connection between FLCN and p62 in this specific model.

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Cutibacterium acnes sequence space topology implicates recA and guaA as potential virulence factors

Bohdan et al. | May 01, 2025

<i>Cutibacterium acnes</i> sequence space topology implicates <i>recA</i> and <i>guaA</i> as potential virulence factors
Image credit: Bohdan and Platje 2025

Cutibacterium acnes is a bacterium believed to play an important role in the pathogenesis of common skin diseases such as acne vulgaris. Currently, acne is known to be associated with strains from the type IA1 and IC clades of C. acnes, while those from the type IA2, IB, II, and III phylogroups are associated with skin health. This is the first study to explore the sequence space of individual gene products of different C. acnes phylogroups. Our analysis compared the sequence space topology of virulence factors to proteins with unknown functions and housekeeping proteins. We hypothesized that sequence space features of virulence factors are different from housekeeping protein features, which potentially provides an avenue to deduce unknown proteins’ functions. This proposition should be confirmed based on further experimental outcomes. A notable similarity in the sequence spaces’ topological features of previously known as housekeeping proteins encoded by recA and guaA genes to ‘putative virulence’ genes camp2 and tly was observed. Our research suggests further investigation of recA and guaA’s potential virulence properties to better understand acne pathogenesis and develop more targeted acne treatments.

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Effects of common supplements on human platelet aggregation in vitro

Prabhakar et al. | Apr 16, 2025

Effects of common supplements on human platelet aggregation in vitro
Image credit: The authors

There is a need for safe and effective therapies to prevent platelet aggregation associated with cardiovascular diseases. Prabhakar and Prabhakar test to see whether dietary supplements claiming to reduce cardiovascular disease risk will affect aggregation of human platelets.

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