Background: <br> Obesity is a global pandemic leading to increased mortality and increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Bariatric surgery is an established treatment of obesity leading to weight loss and reduction of mortality. To further elucidate how bariatric surgery improves metabolic control, we explored the fatty acid (FA) profiles in morbidly obese subjects treated with lifestyle ...

Background Abnormal remodelling of the extracellular matrix (ECM) has generally been linked to pulmonary inflammation and fibrosis and may also play a role in the pathogenesis of severe COVID-19. To further elucidate the role of ECM remodelling and excessive fibrogenesis in severe COVID-19, we examined circulating levels of mediators involved in various aspects of these processes in COVID-19 ...

<p><i>Aims</i>: Heart failure (HF) is a multifactorial disease. Current treatments target only a fraction of the putative pathophysiological pathways. In patients with HF, reduced cardiac output and congestion cause increased gut wall permeability. It has been suggested that leakage of microbial products is detrimental to the heart, at least partly through activation of systemic inflammatory pathways, ...

<i>Background</i> - A high proportion of COVID‐19 patients have cardiac involvement, even those without known cardiac disease. Downregulation of angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), a receptor for SARS‐CoV‐2 and the renin‐angiotensin system, as well as inflammatory mechanisms have been suggested to play a role. ACE2 is abundant in the gut and associated with gut microbiota composition. We ...

A substantial proportion of patients with common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) have inflammatory and autoimmune complications of unknown etiology. We have previously shown that systemic inflammation in CVID correlates with their gut microbial dysbiosis. The gut microbiota dependent metabolite trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) has been linked to several metabolic and inflammatory disorders, but has ...

<p><i>Objective</i> Bile acids (BAs) are now recognized as signaling molecules and emerging evidence suggests that BAs affect cardiovascular function. The gut microbiota has recently been linked to the severity of heart failure (HF), and microbial metabolism has a major impact on BA homeostasis. We aimed to investigate the pattern of BAs, and particularly microbiota-transformed (secondary) BAs, in ...

Background: Trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO) is formed in the liver from trimethylamine (TMA), a product exclusively generated by the gut microbiota from dietary phosphatidylcholine and carnitine. An alternative pathway of TMAO formation from carnitine is via the microbiota-dependent intermediate g-butyrobetaine (gBB). Elevated TMAO levels are associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD), but little ...

The association between pulmonary sequelae and markers of disease severity, as well as pro-fibrotic mediators, were studied in 108 patients 3 months after hospital admission for COVID-19. The COPD assessment test (CAT-score), spirometry, diffusion capacity of the lungs (DL_CO), and chest-CT were performed at 23 Norwegian hospitals included in the NOR-SOLIDARITY trial, an open-labelled, ...

OBJECTIVE It is of vital importance to elucidate the triggering factors of obesity and type 2 diabetes to improve patient care. Bariatric surgery has been shown to prevent and even cure diabetes, but the mechanism is unknown. Elevated levels of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) predict incident diabetes, but the sources of LPS are not clarified. The objective of the current study was to evaluate the ...

Common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) patients have reduced gut microbial diversity compared to healthy controls. The reduced diversity is associated with gut leakage, increased systemic inflammation and ten “key” bacteria that capture the gut dysbiosis (dysbiosis index) in CVID. Rifaximin is a broad-spectrum non-absorbable antibiotic known to reduce gut leakage (lipopolysaccharides, LPS) in liver ...