ULCER BUG MAY TRIGGER PARKINSON'S

   Does a bacterial bad guy connected to ulcers and stomach cancer and is its name Helicobacter pylori?  Previous studies have suggested that people with Parkinson’s are more likely to have had ulcers.  About 60,000 new cases of the disease are diagnosed each year in the United States.  Researchers gathered recently at the 2011 ASM Meeting to study more on this notorious bacterium to pin at least some of the blame for Parkinson’s disease.  Visit www.sciencenews.org/asm2011.

   Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the air may have profound effects on underground microbes.  Researchers led by Zhili He of the University of Oklahoma in Norman compared soil microbial communities that developed under current atmospheric conditions under the elevated levels of carbon dioxide that are predicted for 2050.  Fewer bacteria and less diverse microbe mixtures were present under elevated carbon dioxide conditions, Dr. He reported May 23.  Some of the differences in the bacterial mixes could be attributed to carbon dioxide directly, but the gas can also change microbial communities indirectly by altering plant physiology and soil conditions.

   Cell phones may mess with body’s bacterial guests.  Weak magnetic fields that are generated by cell phones, microwave ovens and other consumer devices may alter the growth of friendly microbes in the body.  Exposure to weak fields caused E. coli bacterial to thrive, but impaired growth of a common skin bacterium called Staphyloccus epidermidis and also a pathogenic common skin bacterium called Pseudomonas aeruginosa, reported Sanghoon Kang, a microbiologist at the University of Houston,-Clear Lake on May 24.  I don’t have a good answer to why,” Kang said.  It’s also not clear whether bacteria in the body would be affected in the same way as those grown in the lab.