Flinders University

About: Flinders University is a education organization based out in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Health care. The organization has 12033 authors who have published 32831 publications receiving 973172 citations. The organization is also known as: Flinders University of South Australia.

A World Without Mangroves

Abstract: At a meeting of world mangrove experts held last year in Australia, it was unanimously agreed that we face the prospect of a world deprived of the services offered by mangrove ecosystems, perhaps within the next 100 years Mangrove forests once covered more than 200,000 km2 of sheltered tropical

Gut microbiome remodeling induces depressive-like behaviors through a pathway mediated by the host's metabolism

Abstract: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is the result of complex gene-environment interactions. According to the World Health Organization, MDD is the leading cause of disability worldwide, and it is a major contributor to the overall global burden of disease. However, the definitive environmental mechanisms underlying the pathophysiology of MDD remain elusive. The gut microbiome is an increasingly recognized environmental factor that can shape the brain through the microbiota-gut-brain axis. We show here that the absence of gut microbiota in germ-free (GF) mice resulted in decreased immobility time in the forced swimming test relative to conventionally raised healthy control mice. Moreover, from clinical sampling, the gut microbiotic compositions of MDD patients and healthy controls were significantly different with MDD patients characterized by significant changes in the relative abundance of Firmicutes, Actinobacteria and Bacteroidetes. Fecal microbiota transplantation of GF mice with 'depression microbiota' derived from MDD patients resulted in depression-like behaviors compared with colonization with 'healthy microbiota' derived from healthy control individuals. Mice harboring 'depression microbiota' primarily exhibited disturbances of microbial genes and host metabolites involved in carbohydrate and amino acid metabolism. This study demonstrates that dysbiosis of the gut microbiome may have a causal role in the development of depressive-like behaviors, in a pathway that is mediated through the host's metabolism.

Analysis of immune-related loci identifies 48 new susceptibility variants for multiple sclerosis

Abstract: Using the ImmunoChip custom genotyping array, we analyzed 14,498 subjects with multiple sclerosis and 24,091 healthy controls for 161,311 autosomal variants and identified 135 potentially associated regions (P < 10 × 10(-4)) In a replication phase, we combined these data with previous genome-wide association study (GWAS) data from an independent 14,802 subjects with multiple sclerosis and 26,703 healthy controls In these 80,094 individuals of European ancestry, we identified 48 new susceptibility variants (P < 50 × 10(-8)), 3 of which we found after conditioning on previously identified variants Thus, there are now 110 established multiple sclerosis risk variants at 103 discrete loci outside of the major histocompatibility complex With high-resolution Bayesian fine mapping, we identified five regions where one variant accounted for more than 50% of the posterior probability of association This study enhances the catalog of multiple sclerosis risk variants and illustrates the value of fine mapping in the resolution of GWAS signals