Last week biologists announced that several studies have solidified that fact that most cases of bad breath are caused by bacteria. Shocking? Not for anyone who understands the Marshall pathogenesis for chronic disease in which nearly all conditions can be attributed to the presence of L-form bacteria, biofilm bacteria, or other persistent forms of bacteria (collectively called the Th1 pathogens).

The culprit behind bad breath - Solobacterium moorei, which uses the tongue as a base on which to brew its halitosis-provoking fatty acids and malodorous compounds.

Two studies helped researchers confirm the findings. One, by the Buffalo School of Dental Medicine, probed 21 people with chronic bad breath and 36 without and found S. moorei in every patient that had halitosis. S. moorei was found in four of the comparison group, and while they were not yet polluting the air with foul emissions, all had periodontitis, an infection of the gums that can also lead to chronically bad breath. The biologists presented their findings at the annual meeting of the American Association for Dental Research in Dallas.

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Need proof that consuming high levels of vitamin D can curb your lifespan? Look no farther then a study published this month in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition which found that middle-aged men who ate seven or more eggs a week had a higher risk of earlier death from diabetes.

More specifically, Dr. Luc Djousse and Dr. J. Michael Gaziano of Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School found that men with diabetes who ate any eggs at all doubled their risk of death during a 20-year study period. The team studied 21,327 men taking part in the much larger Physicians’ Health Study, which has been watching doctors since 1981 who have agreed to report regularly on their health and lifestyle habits.

“More egg on our faces? It’s really hard to say at this point, but it still seems, if you’re a middle-aged male physician and enjoy eggs more than once a day, then having some of the egg left on your face may be better than having it go down your gullet,” said Dr. Robert Eckel of the University of Colorado and a former president of the American Heart Association.

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How many times have you been told that you can control your weight simply by adjusting your diet and making time for exercise? The idea that we are able to completely control our weight through willpower and food intake has been seared into our thinking so frequently by friends, family, the media, and even or our doctors, that most people still blame MacDonalds for the country’s weight problems.

Yet, this week another study was published which strongly suggests that our weight is not, by any means, soley governed by what we eat. Rather, it is mediated by factors out of our control, one of them being the balance of chemicals in our bodies.

In a recent paper, published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, researchers at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences Institute at the University of Tokyo in Japan explain two molecular pathways that directly affect the formation of adipocytes, another name for fat cells. At the center of both pathways is the nuclear receptor PPAR-gamma, a receptor that is also at the heart of the immune response.

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A few days ago, I was glad to read the following study which supports the hypothesis I plan to present at the upcoming Days of Molecular Medicine Conference in Sweden.

In a study published this month in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, researchers at the University of Salt Lake City in Utah, reported that although boys with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) appear to be more impulsive and troubled than their female counterparts, in adulthood the condition seems to have more impact in women than in men.

“We found that adult women with ADHD frequently have high levels of emotional symptoms as well as the cognitive problems found in ADHD,” Dr. Frederick W. Reimherr, head of the study, told Reuters Health.

Why do some people develop reactions in response to immune system challenges while others don’t?

This week, in a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills of the University of Virginia and colleagues looked at reports of patients who experienced what they believe are severe allergic reactions to the cancer drug Erbitux. The drug, which is widely used — it had global sales of $1.1 billion in 2006 for use in treating colon, head and neck cancers — is a monoclonal antibody, a genetically engineered immune system compound designed to home in specifically on cancer cells.

The team tested 538 people, including 76 cancer patients who got Erbitux in Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina and healthy volunteers from Tennessee, California and Boston in order to gauge their reaction to the drug. Of the 76 cancer patients, 25 developed what were labelled “hypersensitivity reactions.”

Data revealed that the number of patients to develop a reaction to Erbitux varied depending on location. Platts- Mills and team found that as 22 percent of patients treated with Erbitux in Tennessee and North Carolina reported some kind of reaction, including anaphylaxis, which can rapidly lead to difficulty breathing, shock or fainting. Some of the reactions were described as life threatening. Even higher rates were reported from parts of Arkansas, Missouri and Virginia. But fewer than 1 percent of patients treated in the Northeast reported any reactions.

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As a greater number of research teams begin to use molecular technology rather then standard cultivation mechanisms to detect bacteria in their samples, it is becoming increasingly obvious why doctors and researchers are unaware that their patients with chronic inflammatory disease are infected with large quantities of L-form and biofilm bacteria - the techniques they are using to look for bacteria prove rather useless in actually identifying the pathogens.

This month yet another paper was published whose results confirm that the Petri dish is a thing of the past. The study, which was published in BMC Microbiology, used a series of molecular techniques to identify the species of biofilm bacteria present inside several different kinds of wounds.

Bioflims are formed when a complex and varied group of bacteria aggregate together inside a protective and adhesive protein matrix. The bacteria inside a biofilm cooperate to promote their own survival and the chronic nature of an infection. While dentists have long realized that bacteria in the mouth often reside inside biofilms - they form much of the goo that they remove from teeth - researchers are just starting to investigate bioflim communities that form in other areas of the body.

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It’s not unusual for people, especially those with Th1 disease, to find that soy doesn’t always work well in their diet.

But the reason why soy appears to cause problems in many people with Th1 disease remained largely speculative until several month ago, when biomedical researcher Trevor Marshall used molecular modeling software to observe the way that the primary soy isoflavone (or antioxidant), called Genistein, interacts with the Vitamin D Receptor.

Marshall’s model of 1,25-D and Genistein as they dock into the VDR.

His models revealed that Genistein is a partial agonist (activator) of the VDR, and that the substance forms hydrogen bonds with several of the same residues as the vitamin D metabolite 1,25-D (which also activates the VDR).

But, Marshall warned, there’s a catch. Genistein doesn’t have the “tail” of Vitamin D or Benicar, meaning that it cannot transcribe certain genes “which need co-activators requiring helix 12 to be stabilized.”

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Several months ago, I reported on two studies published in the medical journal Nature by Jeff Gordon, a Washington University Scientist intent on investigating correlations between gut bacteria and weight.

Among Gordon’s findings was the fact that his obese and lean volunteers had substantially different compositions of bacteria in their guts. Obese volunteers had 20 percent more of a bacterial species called firmicutes in their gut, but harbored almost 90 percent less of another bacterial species called bacteroidetes than lean volunteers.

Interestingly, when obese subjects were put on a low-carb, low-fat diet, the composition of the bacteria in their guts started to adjust to more closely resemble the ratios of bacteria seen in their lean counterparts.

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A week ago, yet another study was published that casts serious doubt on a long-standing consensus among mainstream doctors and researchers - namely the idea if people are given extra vitamin D they will absorb more calcium, thus strengthening their bones.

In a paper published in the Journal of Bone Mineral Research titled “Disease or No Disease?” researchers tested the effects of extra vitamin D on calcium absorption in a group of postmenopausal women. The women had been diagnosed with “vitamin D insufficiency” – a label given to those people mainstream medicine contends to have a “low” level of the secosteroid 25-D.

The researchers put the consensus to the test by tracking the amount of calcium absorbed (called fractional calcium absorption) after subjects were administered 50,000 IU of vitamin D daily (a ridiculously high amount!) for 15 days. During the study, subjects also consumed their typical diet along with (44)Ca– the number 44 refers to the isotope of Calcium being consumed– orally with breakfast and (42)Ca administered intravenously each day.

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What’s the latest news among people taking statins, or drugs that are marketed as cholesterol lowering agents? Pfizer Inc.’s Lipitor, the world’s best-selling statin, with revenues of $12.6 billion in 2007, causes some women to experience what researchers are referring to as serious cognitive side effects, reports reports The Wall Street Journal.

“This drug makes women stupid,” Orli Etingin, vice chairman of medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, declared at a recent luncheon discussion sponsored by Project A.L.S. to raise awareness of gender issues and the brain. Dr. Etingin, who is also founder and director of the Iris Cantor Women’s Health Center in New York, told those present about a typical patient in her 40s, who after taking Lipitor was unable to concentrate or recall words. Tests found nothing amiss, but when the woman stopped taking Lipitor, the symptoms vanished. When she resumed taking Lipitor, they returned.

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Several recent reports have made it abundantly clear that until drug companies understand the infectious pathogenesis of chronic disease, they will continue to churn out dangerous drugs with numerous side effects – drugs that only offer “Band–Aids” for symptoms at the cost of billions of dollars to the consumer.

A few days ago, researchers at Stanford University released the results of a study that tracked the effects of a drug called Sutent on patients with kidney cancer or gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST). Sutent, which is widely being tested for the treatment of several other cancers, works by starving tumors — stopping them from growing blood vessels to feed themselves.

Fifteen percent of study subjects taking Sutent developed heart failure, a chronic condition in which the heart loses its ability to pump blood properly. Sutent, made under the generic name sunitinib by Pfizer, has also been shown to damage heart cells.

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All across the country researchers such as Dr. Reinhold Vieth are telling people to supplement with levels of vitamin D up to four times as high as the current RDA, or 2000 IUs a day. A friend attending medical school at UCLA told me yesterday that he and his fellow students have been taught to ignore the RDA requirement for vitamin D and tell their future patients to take at least 1000 IUs of the secosteroid. The Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) announced its recommendation that Canadians consider taking 1000 mg of vitamin D daily in the fall and winter, and have refused to suspend the recommendation pending a review. Why is the substance being promoted in this manner at such high levels? Largely because vitamin D proponents are confident that the substance decreases the incidence of cardiovascular disease.

In fact, in the health section of yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, Nova Scotia epidemiologist Dr. Louise Parker touted vitamin D as the “new aspirin” because of its perceived ability to benefit people with heart conditions.

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Could people 800 years ago have benefited from the Marshall Protocol? Did cave men suffer from infection with L-form bacteria? Nobody knows for sure when these stealthy pleiomorphic bacteria first began to infect human beings, but a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers at Pennsylvania State University suggests that Th1 disease was already common during the middle ages.

The team analyzed 490 skeletons from a London cemetery for Black Death victims – the name given to those people who succumed to the plague epidemic of 1347 to 1351. Black Death – named after the black spots the bubonic form of the plague caused on the skin - was one of the deadliest recorded in human history, killing about 75 million people, according to some estimates, including more than a third of Europe’s population.

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For decades, researchers working with L-form bacteria have warned that while standard antibiotic therapy successfully kills classical bacterial forms, it leaves bacteria that transform into the L-form unscathed. In fact, when the beta-lactam antibiotics are administered to patients with acute infection, they actually foster the growth of L-form bacteria, meaning that patients treated with these antibiotics can certainly plan on dealing with numerous symptoms of chronic disease in the years to come.

Because L-form bacteria grow so slowly, few researchers have made the connection between acute infection and chronic symptoms that rear their heads decades down the road. However, several research teams have finally taken note of the fact that food poisoning victims, who at one point suffered from a severe acute infection, are much more likely to develop chronic symptoms later in life.

“It’s a dirty little secret of food poisoning,” says Lauren Neergaard of Yahoo News. “E. coli and certain other foodborne illnesses can sometimes trigger serious health problems months or years after patients survived that initial bout. Scientists only now are unraveling a legacy that has largely gone unnoticed.”

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A decade ago, after researchers linked folic acid with a reduced rate of a birth defect called spinal bifidia, the FDA mandated that the substance be added to wheat flour and other grain products. Since that time, 42 other countries have implemented some form of mandatory folic acid fortification based on the same premise.

However recent research has revealed that over the past decade, rates of colorectal cancer in the United States have risen for inexplicable reasons, even as regular colonoscopy check-ups have become more common. In Canada, where folic acid supplementation was introduced a bit later, the same trend has been observed.

Two recent commentaries appearing in Nutrition Reviews address these findings and provide an overview of the existing evidence on folic acid fortification and the associated policy issues.

Dr. Solomons, author of one of the commentaries, “Food Fortification with Folic Acid: Has the Other Shoe Dropped?” advises that a careful reconsideration of the fortification program is needed stating, “One size of dietary folic acid exposure does not fit all. It can be beneficial to some and detrimental to others at the same time.”

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