A commensal-derived sugar protects against metabolic disease.

Obesity is a worsening global epidemic that is regulated by the microbiota through unknown bacterial factors. We discovered a human-derived commensal bacterium, , that protects against metabolic disease by secreting a phosphocholine-modified exopolysaccharide. Genetic interruption of the phosphocholine biosynthesis locus ( ) results in a functionally inactive exopolysaccharide, which demonstrates the critical requirement for this phosphocholine moiety.

Commensal bacteria inhibit viral infections via a tryptophan metabolite.

There is growing appreciation that commensal bacteria impact the outcome of viral infections, though the specific bacteria and their underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Studying a simian-human immunodeficiency virus (SHIV)-challenged cohort of pediatric nonhuman primates, we bioinformatically associated Lactobacillus gasseri and the bacterial family Lachnospiraceae with enhanced resistance to infection. We experimentally validated these findings by demonstrating two different Lachnospiraceae isolates, Clostridium immunis and Ruminococcus gnavus, inhibited HIV replication in vitro and ex vivo.

and its metabolic pathways positively correlate with vaccine-elicited antibody responses in infant rhesus macaques.

Introduction: It is becoming clearer that the microbiota helps drive responses to vaccines; however, little is known about the underlying mechanism. In this study, we aimed to identify microbial features that are associated with vaccine immunogenicity in infant rhesus macaques.

Methods: We analyzed 16S rRNA gene sequencing data of 215 fecal samples collected at multiple timepoints from 64 nursery-reared infant macaques that received various HIV vaccine regimens.

Efficacy of probiotic treatment as post-exposure prophylaxis for COVID-19: A double-blind, Placebo-Controlled Randomized trial.

Background & Aims: The COVID-19 pandemic continues to pose unprecedented challenges to worldwide health. While vaccines are effective, additional strategies to mitigate the spread/severity of COVID-19 continue to be needed. Emerging evidence suggests susceptibility to respiratory tract infections in healthy subjects can be reduced by probiotic interventions; thus, probiotics may be a low-risk, low-cost, and easily implementable modality to reduce risk of COVID-19.

Can people hear others' crying?: A computational analysis of help-seeking on Weibo during COVID-19 outbreak in China.

Social media like Weibo has become an important platform for people to ask for help during COVID-19 pandemic. Using a complete dataset of help-seeking posts on Weibo during the COVID-19 outbreak in China ( = 3,705,188), this study mapped their characteristics and analyzed their relationship with the epidemic development at the aggregate level, and examined the influential factors to determine whether and the extent the help-seeking crying could be heard at the individual level using computational methods for the first time. It finds that the number of help-seeking posts on Weibo has a Granger causality relationship with the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases with a time lag of eight days.