Latest Stomach Stories

Two cell proteins that relax the gut and help accommodate a big meal have been identified by UCL (University College London) scientists. The proteins could offer a future drug target against weight gain, by preventing the stomach from expanding.In a paper published in this month's issue of the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, Dr Brian King and Dr Andrea Townsend-Nicholson explored the molecular basis of relaxations of the gut. In the study, the authors identified two...

Crocodiles are ferocious creatures that will eat snakes, buffalo, cattle and even people. New research explains crocodiles' spectacular method of digesting large meals that lets them eat 23 percent of their body weight at once, bones and all. If people could gorge like crocodiles, a 130-pound woman could down a 30-pound hamburger in one sitting. The secret behind this champion eating is a heart valve that crocs control neurologically, which lets blood bypass the lungs and...

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -- Guessing about the contents of a cow's stomach is a thing of the past for University of Arkansas researchers - all they have to do is reach in and take a sample. The university's Animal Science Department has surgically implanted 4-inch-wide tubes, called cannulas, in the sides of 12 cows.The cannulas allow the scientists to get a real-time look at a bovine's stomach contents in a study of the effect of grazing on nutrient run off into river watersheds.On a recent visit,...

Sauropods did not have a 'gastric mill.' How they processed their food without molars remains unclearThe giant dinosaurs had a problem. Many of them had narrow, pointed teeth, which were more suited to tearing off plants rather than chewing them. But how did they then grind their food? Until recently many researchers have assumed that they were helped by stones which they swallowed. In their muscular stomach these then acted as a kind of 'gastric mill'. But this assumption does not seem to be...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Researchers believe a kind of stomach pacemaker could be a viable treatment for obesity. In a small study of healthy volunteers, gastric electrical stimulation delivered via electrodes placed in the lining of the stomach using an endoscope, reduced the subjects' intake of food and water and seemed to delay emptying of the stomach. The idea actually goes back about ten years. Implantable gastric stimulation showed promise as a treatment for morbid obesity...

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Australians Barry Marshall and Robin Warren won the 2005 Nobel Medicine prize for discovering a bacterium that causes gastritis and stomach ulcers, said the Nobel Assembly of Stockholm's Karolinska Institute on Monday. They made the "remarkable and unexpected discovery that inflammation in the stomach as well as ulceration of the stomach...is the result of an infection of the stomach caused by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori," it said, announcing the winners of...