Session reports from a guest blogger

Dr Ayse Zengin (UK) has been roaming the Congress to bring us reports from some of the sessions she's sat in on.

From Monday 5 May:

"There must be gold in their stool" is how Prof. Nieuwdorp from The Netherlands described "super donors" for faecal transplantation. Insulin resistant individuals have improved insulin sensitivity following faecal transplantation from "super donors". Apparently, faecal transplantation isn't a new phenomena - 2000 years ago it was used in Ancient Chinese medicine to treat people with chronic diarrhoea which was called "yellow soup"! A study which compared individuals with chronic diarrhoea who were either treated with antibiotics or faecal transplantion showed that 90% of patients who received a transplant were cured as opposed to only 30% that received antibiotic treatment. Professor Nieuwdorp finished his talk by showing new and exciting data from E. Halli which reveals a potential therapeutic target for insulin resistance.

Prof. Pedersen from Denmark explained his groups latest findings in gut microbiota. He is involved in a multi-centre study called "MetaHit" which is part of the European Union's 7th Framework Programme. One of the aims of this huge study is to map genes to known bacterial genomes. This study will be able to identify people who have an increased risk for diseases such as cardiovascular disease by looking at their gut microbiota.

Who would've thought faeces would be exciting to talk about....

And from Sunday 4 May:

"It's not how fat you are, it's what you do with it that counts", Professor Vidal-Puig's interesting talk about adiposity explained the differences in fuel utilisation, fat distribution and body weight loss in overweight and obese individuals. He also went on to say that having more fat is not always bad, as long as it is not visceral fat.

Adipocytes have a maximum capacity to expand. Fibrosis of adipocytes is inhibitory to expandability. When expandability is exceeded, there are metabolic complications such as insulin resistance.

If you want to try your hand at blogging then let us know by emailing us or tweeting @ESEndocrinology.