HIV, the gut microbiome and clinical outcomes, a systematic review.

Background: Effective antiretroviral therapy (ART) has improved the life expectancy of people with HIV (PWH). However, this population is now experiencing accelerated age-related comorbidities, contributed to by chronic immune activation and inflammation, with dysbiosis of the gut microbiome also implicated.

Method: We conducted a systematic literature search of PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Cochrane reviews and international conference abstracts for articles that examined for the following non-communicable diseases (NCDs); cardiovascular disease, cancer, frailty, metabolic, bone, renal and neurocognitive disease, in PWH aged >18 years.

International consensus statement on microbiome testing in clinical practice.

There is growing interest in the potential exploitation of the gut microbiome as a diagnostic tool in medicine, but evidence supporting its clinical usefulness is scarce. An increasing number of commercial providers offer direct-to-consumer microbiome diagnostic tests without any consensus on their regulation or any proven value in clinical practice, which could result in considerable waste of individual and health-care resources and potential drawbacks in the clinical management of patients. We convened an international multidisciplinary expert panel to standardise best practices of microbiome testing for clinical implementation, including recommendations on general principles and minimum requirements for their provision, indications, pre-testing protocols, method of analyses, reporting of results, and potential clinical value.

Dysrupted microbial tryptophan metabolism associates with SARS-CoV-2 acute inflammatory responses and long COVID.

Protection against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and risk of long COVID has been associated with the depletion or over-abundance of specific taxa within the gut microbiome. However, the microbial mechanisms mediating these effects are not yet known. We hypothesized that altered microbial production of tryptophan and its downstream derivatives might contribute to inappropriate immune responses to viral infection.

Exploring the Impact of Variability in Cell Segmentation and Tracking Approaches.

Segmentation and tracking are essential preliminary steps in the analysis of almost all live cell imaging applications. Although the number of open-source software systems that facilitate automated segmentation and tracking continue to evolve, many researchers continue to opt for manual alternatives for samples that are not easily auto-segmented, tracing cell boundaries by hand and reidentifying cells on consecutive frames by eye. Such methods are subject to inter-user variability, introducing idiosyncrasies into the results of downstream analysis that are a result of subjectivity and individual expertise.

Healthy and Unhealthy Aging and the Human Microbiome.

An altered gut microbiome is a feature of many multifactorial diseases, and microbiome effects on host metabolism, immune function, and possibly neurological function are implicated. Increased biological age is accompanied by a change in the gut microbiome. However, age-related health loss does not occur uniformly across all subjects but rather depends on differential loss of gut commensals and gain of pathobionts.