My hope: TMAU short

 

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

VIDEO "My hope: Tmau short"

My hope: Tmau short

by TheoMeta

W.K. Elohim Productions

March 30, 2017

One of our community members found this TMAU short film and shared it with me. For the first time ever, it was actually optimistic and full of hope.

I do believe we have come a long way, as we continue steadfastly on the path looking for answers that we hope will arrive sooner than later. There is currently more hope now because there are many "fronts" from which we are expecting new discoveries, and that is most promising, uplifting and inspiring.

Thank you TheoMeta for doing this film and for allowing me to post it in the MEBO Blog! Sharing the hope saves lives. We must keep sharing.

María

Metabolic Pathway Simulation: Apocrine Bromhidrosis compared to TMAU

Metabolic Pathway Simulation: Apocrine Bromhidrosis compared to TMAU

METABOLIC PATHWAY SIMULATIONS

APOCRINE BROMHIDROSIS

COMPARED TO TRIMETHYLAMINURIA

Danny.kunz@gmx.de

Click for presentation

Danny Kunz has donated a very interesting PowerPoint presentation for the MEBO Conference 2017 consisting of metabolic pathway simulations on Apocrine Bromhidrosis compared to Trimethylaminuria. This presentation also discusses the role of the eccrine glands in bromhidrosis.

We are most grateful to Danny, who is a part of this, "loosely coupled group of patients (and non-patients) with academic degree and without academic degree integrating our separate research capabilities and representing an addressable unit."

This theory is supported by high throughput simulations backed by large enzyme databases, which makes it a very persuasive presentation. In other words, this group has done a computer simulation of bromhidrosis backed up by large enzyme databases, as Danny explains in the presentation. Their theory is that bromhidrosis is an apocrine and eccrine sweat glands metabolic disease.  Danny also says in his presentation that thyroid function with and without elevated hormone, TSH, may plays a role in bromhidrosis, and the group recommends supplementation and diet for this.

Even though the simulations discussed in this PowerPoint presentation do not have the aspect of medical proof yet, it provides a very compelling theory that calls for further research.

TOPIC OF THE PRESENTATION:

1.      Fecal (indole) breath and body odor and it's recommended supplementation and diet, 

2.      Apocrine and eccrine sweat glands metabolic disease in bromhidrosis,

a.      Discussions on isovaleric acid and amino acid leucine in eccrine bromhidrosis,

b.      Recommends a Thyroid functions blood test, with and without elevated Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH), and recommended supplementation and diet.

This very interesting presentation raises question on whether TMAU2 to TMAU1 relation pattern could be transferred to the Bromhidrosis pattern as well.

Click for larger copy

We are most grateful to Danny Kunz and his colleagues for creating this very interesting presentation for our MEBO Annual Conference and Meetup 2017!

María

María de la Torre
Founder and Executive Director

A Public Charity
maria.delatorre@meboresearch.com
www.meboresearch.org
www.mebo.com.br/
MEBO's Blog (English)
El Blog de MEBO (español)
MEBO Brasil - Blog (Portuguese)

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Giving the underserved the care they deserve

Nobody likes strong smells coming from other human beings. It's just that social convention: you are nice, if you smell nice, and you are a monster - like Shakespeare's Caliban - if you smell bad.

But it could be the brunt of the genetic or environmental misfortune

MEBO Miami Beach Conference 2017 Prof Shephard's Presentation

 

Friday, March 31, 2017

MEBO Miami Beach Conference 2017 Prof Shephard's Presentation

For full transcript, click here

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PowerPoint Presentation Gut microbiome and diet By Professor Elizabeth Shephard, PhD

For MEBO Annual Meetup and Conference 2017 The Betsy South Beach, Miami Beach March 31, 2017, 8:00 p.m.

SUMMARY

Slide #2 GUT MICROBIOME:

1. The term microbiome refers to a collection of bacteria that inhabit a particular niche in our body, and we have a number of these microbiomes.
• ~90% of an adult human is bacterial.
• 10x more bacterial cells than human cells.
2. Microbiome provides essential functions, i.e., Feeds us, forms us and protect us.
3. Bacteria typically in our gut will digest complex molecules providing us with nutrients.
4. They form us; the bacteria helping us to develop an immune system, and they protect us because if we are inhabited by non-pathogenic bacteria, they will protect us from being inhabited by pathogenic bacteria that can cause disease.
5. We have bacteria that inhabit the esophagus, the stomach, the small intestine, the cecum, and the colon.
6. How do we acquire a microbiome? A baby is born without microbiomes, but it will inherit its mother's microbiome, particular if it's born from the vaginal delivery; and baby born by caesarean section will develop its microbiome slightly delayed from that of a vaginal birth.

Slide #3 PRIMARY TMAU – FMO3, DIET AND MICROBIOME:

Why is the gut microbiome relevant to Primary Trimethylaminuria?

1. When we eat food, gut microbial action in the gut breaks down the bond of the Trimethylamine group, by liberating nitrogen, methyl group, and other atoms that might be linked to them, and liberate the molecule resulting in trimethylamine (TMA).
2. This [odorous] trimethylamine (TMA) molecule is very quickly absorbed [into the bloodstream] and is taken to the liver.
3. In the liver we have this enzyme called FMO3, which is able to catalyze a reaction, which adds an oxygen (the O here in the diagram) onto the nitrogen (N) to form the molecule called trimethylaminuria-N-Oxide (TMAO) [non-odorous], which is then were very rapidly excreted through the kidneys.
4. And so, the cause of trimethylaminuria [TMAU1] is when the FMO3 gene carries a mutation, such that the enzyme that is encoded by this gene, cannot carry out this reaction very efficiently.
5. Flavin containing Monooxygenase 3 is the metabolic enzyme in the liver that adds the oxygen atom (O) to trimethylamine (TMA) to make it non-odorous.

Slide #4 MULTIPLE MICROBIOME-MEDIATED PATHWAYS CAN LEAD TO TMA PRODUCTION

1. A gut free of bacteria does not produce TMA.
2. Several bacterial phyla produce TMA.
3. In the gut we have many different pathways that can be carried out by different bacteria to produce trimethylamine (TMA).
4. Bacteria can actually convert trimethylamine (TMA) [odorous] into trimethylamine-N-Oxide [non odorous], and use it themselves. So this would be by bacterial enzyme.

Slide #5 FISH DIET:

There are a number of different constituents of the diet that have been shown when you culture bacteria to be able to give rise to trimethylamine. These include choline, betaine, carnitine, and also trimethylamine n-oxide (TMAO) [from fish and seafood] itself.

1. Marine fish that live in the sea or in deep fresh water lakes are the richest dietary source of TMA because to protect their protein from breaking down in salt water and pressure changes, the fish Flavin Containing monooxygenase enzyme (protein) is increased to produce a lot of TMAO, which protects their proteins in the muscles of the fish from breaking down.
2. In humans eating fish (high in TMAO) our gut bacteria converts it to TMA with our gut bacteria’s TMAO reductase enzyme and the bacteria uses the TMA for itself. The rest of the TMA is passed from the gut to the liver to be metabolized by the FMO3 metabolic enzyme to add an oxygen atom to make it TMAO (non-odorous).

Slide #6 How do we actually measure the content of a particular foodstuff?

1. The two methods [of measuring the content of TMA in foods], chemical digestion and biological digestion, don't always give the same answer. One is a very harsh chemical condition, and the other one is reliant on the biological digestion of the foodstuffs in the gut by the bacteria that reside in the gut of that Individual.
2. So just looking at a table doesn't necessarily give you the amount of trimethylamine (TMA) that's might be released when a human eats this particular foodstuff.

Slides #7 and #8 TABLES OF DIETARY SOURCES of TMA:

Lists TMA content of foods, including fruits, vegetables, and chicken, mushroom, pork, egg, beef, soya, lamb, mackerel, and cod, indicating significant differences between chemical digestion and biological digestion.

Slide #9 DIETARY INDOLES INHIBIT FMO3 ACTIVITY:

Researchers identified an inhibitor of FMO3 activity in brussel sprouts.

We are most grateful to Professor Elizabeth Shephard, PhD, for her continual monumental support through the years to the MEBO Mission by educating us through her three PowerPoint presentations, by working with United States and United Kingdom governmental agencies and councils, and by spearheading MRC funded research into a therapeutic for TMAU.

María

María de la Torre
Founder and Executive Director

A Public Charity
maria.delatorre@meboresearch.com
www.meboresearch.org
www.mebo.com.br/
MEBO's Blog (English)
El Blog de MEBO (español)
MEBO Brasil - Blog (Portuguese)

Seeing Through the Skin

by AURAMETRIX

​Human skin emits light (albeit the glow is extremely weak) and a wide variety of small molecules that may be sometimes "sniffed" by dogs or even other humans. These chemicals tell a story about our health and wellness, things we eat and drink, touch and breathe. Mosquitoes use such emissions to assess our "attractiveness" from indicators such as Indoles (unpleasantly smelling but healthy "inner soil" biomarker) or carbon dioxide (amount of which correlates with the size of the person producing it) in the air.  Sampling air for health indicators is much less invasive than drawing blood and could be an invaluable diagnostic tool. Many applications of gas sensors have been proposed over decades ranging from sweat patches to sensorized garments. Where are we now? What is the 2016 state of the art? Last month, BACtrack won 1st Prize in “Wearable Alcohol Sensor Challenge” Issued by National Institutes of Health. Milo Sensors, employing a different approach to identify ethanol molecules diffusing through the skin, won 2nd prize. BACtrack Skyn will be available in limited quantities later this year, marking an important step from bulky alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelets remotely monitoring offenders to inconspicuous devices. Perhaps, one day, drug patches, too, won't require sending them to a lab for analysis. Human skin is a super-highway of many small molecules reflecting our health and wellbeing. Various devices capable of "seeing" through our skin were announced in the past several years. Some of them - like AIRO watch claiming to detect metabolites in your bloodstream as they are released during and after meals - turned out to be vaporware. The jury is still out on many others like HealbeGobe. And the remaining ones are still in prototyping stages.  EU-funded Biotex textiles and Perspiration Detective patch development at the University of Cincinnati started from detecting sodium ions in sweat as indicators of hydration levels. A tattoo-like electronic sweat sensor built by a team in UCSD demonstrated that measuring a change in lactate might be sufficient to find when an athlete is about to “hit the wall.” Startup Electrozyme, later renamed to Biolinq, was formed to commercialize this technology. The picture shows their prototype of a skin-applied electrochemical sensor that analyses body fluids to provide actionable health information. The goal is to develop temporary tattoo biosensors providing blood level info without accessing blood. Halo Wearables will launch their non-invasive hydration monitoring wearable in early 2016. It is tailored specifically for elite athletes.  Halo's optical sensors track sodium and potassium levels in the user's blood. ​ Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have also developed a wearable sensor that can monitor sodium, potassium and lactate levels in sweat. A paper with their findings was published in Nature earlier this year. ​ Startup Xsensio, accepted this year in Mass Challenge accelerator, works on “intelligent stamps” the size of a credit card (Lab-on-Skin wearables) including a unique low-power sensor for sweat analysis. ECHO smart patch from Kenzen aims to "silently follow your health and notify you only when it's most important". It analyzes sodium and potassium in sweat to monitor hydration, lactic acid and glucose analysis energy expenditure.  Existing technologies can detect a general increase or decrease in metabolites rather exact concentrations. So using sweat to accurately monitor clinically important variables such as glucose levels, is still out of reach. But developers are employing innovative approaches to make it possible. A team from Seoul National University, University of Texas and a Massachusetts-based company MC10 are developing a flexible patch that senses glucose in people with diabetes and administers drugs, all in a single device. And there may be easier ways to display all the information collected from various sensors -  perhaps even directly on the body - as the team from the University of Tokyo demonstrated with device measuring oxygen saturation levels in blood. ​We've come a long way from bulky and invasive medical equipment that required the patient to remain in the hospital for monitoring. We have made a lot of progress from the times when all symptoms and signs were recorded with a pencil and paper. There is still a lot more to do before real-time self-managing noninvasive diagnostics reaches a breakthrough, but we are so much closer.

REFERENCES


Andreoni G, Standoli CE, & Perego P (2016). Defining Requirements and Related Methods for Designing Sensorized Garments. Sensors (Basel, Switzerland), 16 (6) PMID: 27240361

Gao W, Emaminejad S, Nyein HY, Challa S, Chen K, Peck A, Fahad HM, Ota H, Shiraki H, Kiriya D, Lien DH, Brooks GA, Davis RW, & Javey A (2016). Fully integrated wearable sensor arrays for multiplexed in situ perspiration analysis. Nature, 529 (7587), 509-14 PMID: 26819044

Imani S, Bandodkar AJ, Mohan AM, Kumar R, Yu S, Wang J, & Mercier PP (2016). A wearable chemical-electrophysiological hybrid biosensing system for real-time health and fitness monitoring. Nature communications, 7 PMID: 27212140

Lee H, Choi TK, Lee YB, Cho HR, Ghaffari R, Wang L, Choi HJ, Chung TD, Lu N, Hyeon T, Choi SH, & Kim DH (2016). A graphene-based electrochemical device with thermoresponsive microneedles for diabetes monitoring and therapy. Nature nanotechnology, 11 (6), 566-72 PMID: 26999482

Panneer Selvam A, Muthukumar S, Kamakoti V, & Prasad S (2016). A wearable biochemical sensor for monitoring alcohol consumption lifestyle through Ethyl glucuronide (EtG) detection in human sweat. Scientific reports, 6 PMID: 26996103
XXX

Yokota T, Zalar P, Kaltenbrunner M, Jinno H, Matsuhisa N, Kitanosako H, Tachibana Y, Yukita W, Koizumi M, & Someya T (2016). Ultraflexible organic photonic skin. Science advances, 2 (4) PMID: 27152354

The Smell of Stress and Fear

Can we recognize if people around us are stressed, anxious or fearful without observing their facial expressions, body language and actions or hearing their voice and messages? Can we understand if we are stressed ourselves without assessing our heart rate, blood pressure, noticing dry throat, sweating, drops or surges in energy? Yes, we can - by using our nose - as humans, too, recognize and transmit their emotions through chemical senses.

When we are stressed or panic we become more sensitive to odors (Buróna et al., 2015), ranking neutral odors as unpleasant (Krusemark et al, 2013). Chronic stress will actually dull the senses (Yuan & Slotnick, 2013), but that's another story.

When other people are stressed, we can feel it without seeing or hearing them. Numerous experiments showed that we can recognize emotions from sweat alone. We might not be able to tell why, but experience sympathy by smelling odors of those taking exams vs just exercising on a bike (Prehn-Kristensen et al 2009), become more cooperative when smelling hard work, more submissive when detecting that other people's health status prioritizes their needs, more fearful when detecting chemical clues coming from people watching horror movies (Zhou and Chen, 2009, de Groot et al., 2012) and exhibit risk taking behavior when detecting other people's anxieties (Haegler et al, 2010).

What is the exact chemistry of stress, anxiety and fear? We are getting close to deciphering it. Stress, for example, might be recognized by six biomarkers, including indole and 2-methyl-pentadecane (Turner et al, 2013) that are also indicators of COPD (Martinez-Lozano Sinues et al, 2014) and heart disease. 

Correlating chemicals to health and wellness conditions is not easy. Acetone in breath, for example, has attracted the interest of clinical researchers for more than 60 years. Several dozen independent studies using various techniques and methods showed that much more complex analysis is required with long-term measurements of various health and environmental indicators including diet, treatments and prior medical history (Dowlaty, Yoon, and Galassetti, 2013). Aurametrix provides an integrated platform for such analysis, but until we sift through all the data, if you are stressed out, just take a deep breath and relax. Inhale confidence, exhale doubt.

REFERENCES

Haegler, K., Zernecke, R., Kleemann, A., Albrecht, J., Pollatos, O., Brückmann, H., & Wiesmann, M. (2010). No fear no risk! Human risk behavior is affected by chemosensory anxiety signals Neuropsychologia, 48 (13), 3901-3908 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.09.019

Prehn-Kristensen A, Wiesner C, Bergmann TO, Wolff S, Jansen O, Mehdorn HM, Ferstl R, & Pause BM (2009). Induction of empathy by the smell of anxiety. PloS one, 4 (6) PMID: 19551135

Dowlaty N, Yoon A, & Galassetti P (2013). Monitoring states of altered carbohydrate metabolism via breath analysis: are times ripe for transition from potential to reality? Current opinion in clinical nutrition and metabolic care, 16 (4), 466-72 PMID: 23739629

de Groot JH, Smeets MA, Kaldewaij A, Duijndam MJ, & Semin GR (2012). Chemosignals communicate human emotions. Psychological science, 23 (11), 1417-24 PMID: 23019141

Krusemark EA, Novak L, Gitelman D, Li W. (2013) When the sense of smell meets emotion: Anxiety-state-dependent olfactory processing and neural circuitry adaptation. Journal of Neuroscience. 33(39):15324 –15332.

Martinez-Lozano Sinues P, Meier L, Berchtold C, Ivanov M, Sievi N, Camen G, Kohler M, Zenobi R Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. Respiration; International Review of Thoracic Diseases [2014, 87(4):301-310] PMID: 25545545

Yuan TF, Slotnick BM. Roles of olfactory system dysfunction in depression. (2014) Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry. 54:26-30. doi: 10.1016/j.pnpbp.2014.05.013. 

MEBO TMAU Test Program Results: BATCH #9

 

Thursday, April 24, 2014

MEBO TMAU Test Program Results: BATCH #9

Click on icon to see chart

The MEBO Research TMAU urine test program was launched in June 2012, and to date, 187 tests have been analyzed. The results of Batch #9 TMAU urine tests were received on April 23, 2014, and the 15 individuals tested received their respective results the same day as soon as MEBO received all the results on a spreadsheet from the lab.

The results of each batch seem to be different from each other. The more tests are performed, the better we get a clearer picture of averages.

If you have tested with MEBO, in order to best compare your personal results to the other results, please see the comparison chart, which presents the highest to lowest figures per category, TMA, TMAO, TMA/TMAO Ratio.

The only way to confirm the genetic form of TMAU originally positive urine test is with a DNA test. See article written by Drs. Elizabeth Shephard and Ian Phillips, "Differential Diagnosis" in NCBI, NIH pages.

1. Of the 15 samples in Batch #9
• three (3) were indicative of Primary TMAU (TMAU1)
• none (0) of Secondary TMAU (TMAU2)
2. Of the 15 samples in Batch #8
• three (3) was indicative of TMAU1
• four (4) of Secondary TMAU (TMAU2)
3. Of the 16 samples in Batch #7
• one (1) was indicative of Primary TMAU
• five (5) was indicative of TMAU2

For more information on previous Batches and test results, please see all the posts with keyword, TMAU Test Results.

How to test for TMAU through MEBO :

HOW TO ARRANGE FOR MY TMAU TEST
Click here
TMAU Test Requisition Form

No additional cost throughout the test process will be incurred
after initial payment of test & round trip shipping

María

María de la Torre
Founder and Executive Director

A Public Charity
maria.delatorre@meboresearch.org
www.meboresearch.org
www.mebo.com.br/ (em português)
MEBO's Blog (English)
El Blog de MEBO (español)