Although it is clear that probiotics improve intestinal barrier function, little is known about the effects of probiotics on the aging intestine. We investigated effects of 10-week bacterial supplementation of WCFS1, BL23, or DSM20213 on gut barrier and immunity in 16-week-old accelerated aging mice, which have a median lifespan of ~20 weeks, and their wild-type littermates. The colonic barrier in mice was characterized by a thin (< 10 μm) mucus layer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDistal myopathies represent a heterogeneous group of inherited skeletal muscle disorders. One type of adult-onset, progressive autosomal-dominant distal myopathy, frequently associated with dysphagia and dysphonia (vocal cord and pharyngeal weakness with distal myopathy [VCPDM]), has been mapped to chromosome 5q31 in a North American pedigree. Here, we report the identification of a second large VCPDM family of Bulgarian descent and fine mapping of the critical interval.
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