The human gut microbiome is more important to health than most people realize. It is filled with trillions of microbes ranging from fungi to bacteria and viruses. This paper focuses on preservatives and emulsifiers and the effects they have on the gut microbiome. These two food additives affect different types of bacteria differently. Emulsifiers and preservatives increased bacteria that tend to have negative effects on the body, while decreasing beneficial bacteria. This can have many different effects on the body from Crohn's disease to dysbiosis and even increase antimicrobial resistance in bacteria. This review looks to explain why preservatives and emulsifiers have such negative effects, why it is such a relevant and important topic, and alternatives to preservatives or emulsifiers, or ways to mitigate the effects of these two food additives.
Future projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report forecast an increase in anthropogenic atmospheric CO¬2 emissions, thereby exacerbating ocean acidification. Studies on CO2-induced acidification report evidence of its deleterious effect on behavioral alterations in marine fish species. One such disturbance affects behavioral lateralization, a function of brain asymmetry and a critical component to schooling performance. Though research has divulged the adverse behavioral effects of ocean acidification on stenohaline marine fishes, euryhaline models have not been explored to such extent. This study explored the combined effects of projected levels of pCO2 (~1300 ppm) and warming (+3.0oC) on behavioral lateralization in a euryhaline teleost, the adult Japanese ricefish (Oryzias latipes). After just five days of the treatment, CO2-treated fish exhibited significantly lower individual-level lateralization indices than that of fish in control CO2 (~300 ppm) and temperature, as well as no statistical difference to that of a random simulation. The implications are far-reaching even for highly efficient osmoregulatory fishes, in that coordination and schooling performance may be hampered at end-of-century conditions, thereby reducing fish population fitness.
This review examines the role probiotics can play in reducing and inhibiting the growth of biofilms that cause bacterial infections in humans. The use of probiotics as an inhibitory agent against biofilms is a new field of study that requires further research. As of now, there is little research or scientific literature to defend the health claims of several commercially sold probiotics. Also, biofilms are a fairly new field of study even though biofilms are the cause of most bacterial infections. Since biofilms have an increased antibiotic resistance, it has become increasingly more important to find alternative treatments for bacterial infections. However, there have been a couple of studies that have shown positive results for probiotics inhibiting the growth of different types of biofilms such as Lactobacillus acidophilus in patients with dental caries caused by the biofilm formation of Streptococcus mutans. Specifically, the biosurfactant
of the probiotic was used to disrupt the biofilm. Another study was done on patients with Clostridium difficile infection who showed a decline in symptoms when treated with the probiotic yeast Saccharomyces boulardii as an additive to antibiotic treatments . While the oral health and gut health fields have started to utilize the benefits of probiotics, the effect of probiotics on the biofilms that cause infections for patients with medical devices has yet to be studied.