A Khorasan wheat-based diet improves systemic inflammatory profile in semi-professional basketball players: a randomized crossover pilot study

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES

Khorasan wheat is an ancient grain with widely acclaimed beneficial effects on human health. The objective of the study was to examine the effect of a Khorasan-based diet on the wellbeing and inflammatory profile of young athletes.

RESULTS

We conducted a randomized, single-blinded crossover trial involving 20 male young athletes. The participants were randomly assigned to consume products (pasta, bread, biscuits and crackers) made either with Khorasan (KAMUT® brand) or modern semi-whole-grain wheat for 4-weeks with a 4-week washout period before the crossover. Laboratory analyses and fitness tests were performed both at the beginning and end of each diet period. The consumption of Khorasan products was associated with a significant reduction of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1; mean reduction: -36.15 pg/mL; -25.67%) while the consumption of modern wheat was not associated with significant differences in Interleukin-8 (IL-8) or Interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1ra). The consumption of the Khorasan-based diet also resulted in a significant improvement in self-rated health status. No statistically significant differences in any athletic performance parameter were observed between the two diets.

CONCLUSION

The present results suggest that a Khorasan-based diet could be effective in reducing the inflammatory status in young athletes. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry.

Isolation and identification of cultivable Bifidobacterium spp. from the faeces of 5 baby common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus L.)

Ninety-two bifidobacterial strains were obtained from the faeces of 5 baby common marmosets, three known species Bifidobacterium aesculapii, Bifidobacterium callithricos and Bifidobacterium reuteri and 4 novel putative bifidobacterial species were retrieved. The occurrence of bifidobacteria in non-human primate babies is described for the first time.

Identification of species belonging to the Bifidobacterium genus by PCR-RFLP analysis of a hsp60 gene fragment

Background

Bifidobacterium represents one of the largest genus within the Actinobacteria, and includes at present 32 species. These species share a high sequence homology of 16S rDNA and several molecular techniques already applied to discriminate among them give ambiguous results.

The slightly higher variability of the hsp60 gene sequences with respect to the 16S rRNA sequences offers better opportunities to design or develop molecular assays, allowing identification and differentiation of closely related species. hsp60 can be considered an excellent additional marker for inferring the taxonomy of the members of Bifidobacterium genus.

Results

This work illustrates a simple and cheap molecular tool for the identification of Bifidobacterium species. The hsp60 universal primers were used in a simple PCR procedure for the direct amplification of 590 bp of the hsp60 sequence. The in silico restriction analysis of bifidobacterial hsp60 partial sequences allowed the identification of a single endonuclease (HaeIII) able to provide different PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) patterns in the Bifidobacterium spp. type strains evaluated. The electrophoretic analyses allowed to confirm the different RFLP patterns.

Conclusions

The developed PCR-RFLP technique resulted in efficient discrimination of the tested species and subspecies and allowed the construction of a dichotomous key in order to differentiate the most widely distributed Bifidobacterium species as well as the subspecies belonging to B. pseudolongum and B. animalis.