Yogurt may get the glory for keeping your gut bacteria healthy, but new research shows that vitamin A is the true mediator in fostering a good relationship between gut bacteria and the immune system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The findings on vitamin A<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A research team at Brown University discovered that moderate levels of vitamin A in the intestine can help the immune system from going into overdrive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The vitamin is activated by a protein called Rdh7 that\u2019s properly adjusted by gut bacteria. In addition, the Rdh7 transforms the vitamin into retinoic acid, the vitamin\u2019s active form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some types of bacteria, such as Firmicutes, lower the expression of Rdh7, while others get the liver to store extra amounts of the vitamin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How the research may\ncontribute to new therapies<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that scientists better understand how gut bacteria,\nvitamin A and the immune system work together, they may be able to create new\ntherapies to help people with autoimmune disorders. These include conditions\nlike Crohn\u2019s disease, ulcerative colitis and other inflammatory diseases that\naffect the intestine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to InflammatoryBowelDisease.net, about 1.6 million\npeople in the United States have inflammatory bowel disease, which includes\nChron\u2019s disease and ulcerative colitis. In addition, it\u2019s estimated that 6 to\n15 new cases (of Chron\u2019s disease) per 100,000 people are diagnosed annually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA change in vitamin A status and vitamin A metabolic genes\ncoincides with inflammatory bowel diseases, but we don\u2019t know if this promotes\ninflammation or not,\u201d explains lead researcher Shipra Vaishnava. \u201cWe hope that\nadding our finding\u2014that bacteria can regulate how vitamin A is being\nmetabolized in the intestine or stored\u2014could help clarify why the field is\nseeing what it is seeing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The researchers hope that eventually, science will be able\nto use either bacteria, diet or both together to treat inflammatory or\ninfectious diseases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The findings were published in the journal Immunity.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A new study has found that vitamin A helps gut bacteria and the immune system. Read more about this research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[690],"tags":[937,938,939,940,941],"class_list":["post-13238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wellness","tag-gut-bacteria","tag-immune-system","tag-immunity","tag-vitamin-a","tag-vitamins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}