Data from these studies were presented this week at the 38th annual Digestive Disease Week (DDW) conference taking place in Washington D.C.

The inflammatory response is a key part of the immune system's battle against invaders, but in certain conditions and diseases, it can do more harm than good by injuring healthy tissue. Inflammation is associated with a variety of conditions, such as inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease and more. Bifantis has previously been shown to modulate the inflammatory response in a clinical trial in irritable bowel syndrome. The results announced this week demonstrate that the anti-inflammatory effects of Bifantis are not restricted to the gastrointestinal tract.

Inflammation is a major factor in a number of chronic diseases, which affect millions of people, said Barry Kiely, Chief Executive Officer, Alimentary Health and an early investigator of the probiotic effects of Bifantis. Data continue to show that Bifantis has anti-inflammatory activity, which may be useful in the management of inflammation-linked diseases.

In one of the studies released today, four bacterial strains were fed to mice. Of these four strains, researchers determined that only Bifantis delayed the onset of artificially induced arthritis and resulted in less severe arthritic symptoms. This study represents some of the latest work assessing the link between diet involving probiotics and certain autoimmune diseases.

In the second study, mice were fed Bifantis and then exposed to Salmonella, a common bacteria associated with a form of food poisoning. Animals that received Bifantis showed dramatically increased numbers of certain immune cells that control the immune system's response to harmful pathogens, in this case Salmonella. Bifantis also increased the numbers of T-regulatory cells in the body, in effect limiting the concentrations of certain signals essential to inflammation, such as cytokines.

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Previous research has focused on the affects diet has on the stomach environment where H. pylori resides, but until now scientists have overlooked the response of the microorganism specifically to these dietary queues. Working from the epidemiological evidence that H. pylori infection combined with a high-salt diet results in an increased incidence of severe gastric maladies, Gancz and colleagues decided to look at the direct effect a high concentration of salt had on both the growth and gene expression of the bacterium.

"We noted that H. pylori growth rate shows a sharp decline at high salt concentrations. Moreover, bacterial cells exposed to increased salt exhibited striking morphological changes: cells became elongated and formed long chains," says Gancz. "We conclude that H. pylori exposed to high levels of salt in vitro exhibit a defect in cell division."

They also discovered transciption of two genes responsible for the virulence of the bacterium was increased during high-salt conditions.

"The altered expression patterns of some virulence genes may partially explain the increased disease risk that is associated with a high salt diet in H. pylori infected individuals," says Gancz.

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