‘Love hormone’ instead of opioids

A groundbreaking new approach to treating chronic abdominal pain

27-Nov-2024 - A research team at the University of Vienna, led by medicinal chemist Markus Muttenthaler, has developed a new class of oral peptide therapeutic leads for treating chronic abdominal pain. This groundbreaking innovation offers a safe, non-opioid-based solution for conditions such as irritable ...

Intestinal inflammation: immune cells protect nerve cells after infection

New findings on the functions of the gut-brain axis

24-Jan-2020 - In the event of an infection in the gastrointestinal tract, part of the tissue becomes inflamed, and intestinal nerve cells die off. Among other things, this loss in turn often leads to a restriction of the gastrointestinal motility, which is essential for a healthy digestion. In many cases, this ...

Even Open-Label Placebos Work – if They Are Explained

28-Sep-2017 - For some medical complaints, open-label placebos work just as well as deceptive ones. As psychologists from the University of Basel and Harvard Medical School report in the journal Pain, the accompanying rationale plays an important role when administering a placebo. The successful treatment of ...

Chronic fatigue syndrome linked to imbalanced microbiome

02-May-2017 - Scientists at the Center for Infection and Immunity (CII) at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health have discovered abnormal levels of specific gut bacteria related to chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME/CFS, in patients with and without concurrent irritable ...

When bowels and brain are out of sorts

21-Oct-2015 - Gastrointestinal disorders are often linked to psychological dysfunctions and can be explained by a malfunction of the communication between bowels and brain, as has been shown by a research project funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF. According to estimates, one in five individuals suffers ...

Research shows a cause of gastrointestinal symptoms in Type 1 diabetes

Excess of growth factor binding protein damages colon-maintaining stem cells

05-Oct-2015 - Research provides a molecular basis for why 80 percent of patients with longstanding Type 1 diabetes have chronic gastrointestinal symptoms including gastroparesis (delayed emptying of food), irritable bowel syndrome, abdominal distension and fecal incontinence, significantly reducing their ...

New therapies for patients with gluten intolerance

Elafin decreases the enzymatic reaction that increases the toxicity of peptides derived from gluten

03-Apr-2014 - Researchers at McMaster University have discovered a key molecule that could lead to new therapies for people with celiac disease, an often painful and currently untreatable autoimmune disorder. Celiac disease is a food sensitivity to dietary gluten contained in cereals. In people who are ...

Fast-moving cells walk in a stepwise manner

19-Mar-2014 - A team of biologists and engineers at the University of California, San Diego has discovered that white blood cells, which repair damaged tissue as part of the body's immune response, move to inflamed sites by walking in a stepwise manner. The cells periodically form and break adhesions mainly ...

New drug to help common bowel disease

31-Oct-2013 - An international team led by University of Adelaide researchers has identified the mechanism of pain relief of a new drug for treating Irritable Bowel Syndrome with Constipation (IBS-C), based on nonclinical studies, and quantified its effectiveness in pain relief in human trials. Published in ...

Researchers identify drugs with fewest side-effects for treating irritable bowel syndrome

27-Mar-2012 - Cedars-Sinai researchers have determined that two prevalent drug therapies – rifaximin and lubiprostone – offer some of the best options for treating irritable bowel syndrome, a widespread disorder that affects up to one in five Americans. The findings, based on an analysis of more than two dozen ...