For how we live.
Among 287 people with REM sleep behaviour disorder followed about four years, 15.7% developed a synucleinopathy. Higher coffee intake was linked to a lower risk of progression.
Greens powders are sold as insurance against a poor diet. There are almost no independent trials of the products themselves — and the strong evidence is for eating vegetables, not drinking them.
In a company-funded randomised trial, adults who lost weight then took pasteurised Akkermansia muciniphila regained 1.2 kg over 24 weeks versus 3.2 kg on placebo — a modest effect in 90 people.
Around 60–70% of infants carry Clostridioides difficile without illness. A Science study finds its toxins remodel the newborn gut in mice — but the direct human evidence is still limited to cells and biopsies.
The trend treats the gut as a dashboard to be tuned with home tests, probiotics and 'gut-healing' protocols. The one intervention with the broadest evidence is the least sold: fibre.
In 53 patients, oral fluconazole — but not a mouth-only antifungal — cut gut Candida and coincided with improved disease activity. The study was observational, brief and unblinded.
A network meta-analysis found route of delivery decides everything, and that autologous transplant ranked below placebo. In IBS, 13 trials produced very low certainty of any effect.
Twelve studies in 1,158 IBS patients found gut-directed hypnotherapy improved symptoms, with the firmest results in high-volume and group delivery. The microbiome route is weaker.
Farm-raised children really are protected from asthma, and the mechanism has been traced to microbial exposure and innate immunity. What has not been shown is that household hygiene caused the allergy epidemic.
It found rising microbiome diversity and falling inflammatory markers in the fermented-food arm — and no change in its own primary outcome in the high-fibre arm it was compared against.
A 2026 meta-analysis pooled every randomised human trial of the gut-derived supplement for muscle health. Only one outcome, from two trials, could be combined — and it missed significance.
US government metrologists sent one homogenised faecal standard to seven consumer testing services. Species counts came back ranging from 20 to 1,701 for the same material.
A systematic review in Cell called that rate implausible and said it overstates the gut microbiome's role in human disease. A separate audit found the statistical tools themselves disagree.
The MITRIC basket trial gave 12 patients with immunotherapy-resistant cancer stool transplants from patients who had responded. It was safe but produced no objective tumour responses.
A sham-controlled trial found FMT shifted bacterial composition but cleared drug-resistant organisms no better than a saline placebo. A second trial shows what a defined replacement product can and cannot yet prove.