The present study investigated the impact of a Lactobacillus rhamnosus CGMCC1.3724 (LPR) supplementation on weight loss and maintenance in obese men and women over 24 weeks. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomised trial, each subject consumed two capsules per d of either a placebo or a LPR formulation (1·6 £ 10 8 colony-forming units of LPR/capsule with oligofructose and inulin). Each group was submitted to moderate energy restriction for the first 12 weeks followed by 12 weeks of weight maintenance. Body weight and composition were measured at baseline, at week 12 and at week 24. The intention-to-treat analysis showed that after the first 12 weeks and after 24 weeks, mean weight loss was not significantly different between the LPR and placebo groups when all the subjects were considered. However, a significant treatment £ sex interaction was observed. The mean weight loss in women in the LPR group was significantly higher than that in women in the placebo group (P¼ 0·02) after the first 12 weeks, whereas it was similar in men in the two groups (P¼ 0·53). Women in the LPR group continued to lose body weight and fat mass during the weight-maintenance period, whereas opposite changes were observed in the placebo group. Changes in body weight and fat mass during the weight-maintenance period were similar in men in both the groups. LPR-induced weight loss in women was associated not only with significant reductions in fat mass and circulating leptin concentrations but also with the relative abundance of bacteria of the Lachnospiraceae family in faeces. The present study shows that the Lactobacillus rhamnosus CGMCC1.3724 formulation helps obese women to achieve sustainable weight loss.

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bOur study is the first to compare the nasopharyngeal microbiota of pediatric pneumonia patients and control children by 454 pyrosequencing. A distinct microbiota was associated with different pneumonia etiologies. Viral pneumonia was associated with a high abundance of the operational taxonomic unit (OTU) corresponding to Moraxella lacunata. Patients with nonviral pneumonia showed high abundances of OTUs of three typical bacterial pathogens, Streptococcus pneumoniae complex, Haemophilus influenzae complex, and Moraxella catarrhalis. Patients classified as having no definitive etiology harbored microbiota particularly enriched in the H. influenzae complex. We did not observe a commensal taxon specifically associated with health. The microbiota of the healthy nasopharynx was more diverse and contained a wider range of less abundant taxa. P neumonia is the leading cause of childhood mortality worldwide, claiming 2 million lives yearly among young children (1). The etiology of pediatric pneumonia is complex and not routinely determined in clinical practice (2). Its definitive determination remains challenging (3). Clinical research shows that Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, and Staphylococcus aureus are the leading pathogens of bacterial pneumonia (1, 4). Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), parainfluenza, and influenza viruses are the main causes of pediatric viral pneumonia (e.g., see references 5 and 6). S. pneumoniae and H. influenzae frequently colonize the nasopharynx of young children, and the nasopharyngeal (NP) carriage of S. pneumoniae is considered key to pneumonia and other pneumococcal diseases (7). However, the mere nasopharyngeal presence of bacterial pathogens does not necessarily lead to invasive lung infection. Various mechanisms, such as competition with resident nonpathogenic microbiota, viral coinfection, or host immune factors are likely to affect the transition from nasopharyngeal colonization to pneumonia (8). The increasing accessibility of culture-independent sequencing methods has permitted microbiota description at various body sites (9), and the potential of commensal microbiota to modify the disease process is receiving increasing attention (10).Previous culture-independent studies of the nasopharyngeal microbiota of young children looked at healthy children (11) and compared the microbiota composition of healthy children and children with acute otitis media (12). In the present study, we analyzed the nasopharyngeal microbiota composition, including the presence of respiratory viruses, in pediatric pneumonia patients and matched healthy controls and looked for microbiota associations with the disease status. MATERIALS AND METHODS Patients and clinical samples.A prospective case-control study conducted in 2008 to 2009 in 3 major hospitals in Switzerland (Geneva, Lausanne, and Sion) to investigate pediatric community-acquired pneumonia etiology was described in detail elsewhere (13). Briefly, pneumonia cases were diagnosed according to the WHO criteria (14) in children 2 ...

Our results show that a formula containing L reuteri DSM 17938 does not essentially alter the microbiota in vaginally born infants. In C-section-delivered infants, however, this strain seems to play the role of keystone species by modulating the early development of the microbiota toward the composition found after vaginal delivery.

This study confirmed previous findings about coffee bioavailability but also showed that coffee phenolics appear in a positive dose-response manner in plasma when drank at nutritionally relevant doses.