Omry KorenBar Ilan University | BIU · Azrieli Faculty of Medicine
Omry Koren
Ph.D.
About
236
Publications
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Introduction
Additional affiliations
January 2010 - December 2013
January 2003 - December 2008
Publications
Publications (236)
Understanding when host-microbiome interactions are first established is crucial for comprehending normal development and identifying disease prevention strategies. Furthermore, bacterially derived metabolites play critical roles in shaping the intestinal immune system. Recent studies have demonstrated that memory T cells infiltrate human intestina...
Here, we explored the vast potential of microbiome-based interventions in preventing and managing non-communicable diseases including obesity, diabetes, allergies, celiac disease, inflammatory bowel diseases, malnutrition, and cardiovascular diseases across different life stages. We discuss the intricate relationship between microbiome and non-comm...
Detecting life has driven research and exploration for centuries, but recent attempts to compile and generate a framework that summarizes life features, aimed to develop strategies for life detection missions beyond planet Earth, have disregarded a key life feature: behavior. Yet, some behaviors such as biomineralization or motility have occasional...
We aimed to develop a prediction model for postprandial glycemic response (PPGR) in pregnant women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and to explore the influence of gut microbial data on prediction accuracy.
We enrolled 105 pregnant women (70 GDM and 35 healthy). Participants underwent continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) for 7 days and provi...
The role of hormones in gut–brain crosstalk is largely elusive, but recent research supports specific changes in hormone levels correlated with the gut microbiota. An interesting but unstudied area in microbial endocrinology is the interplay between the microbiota and sex hormones. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of testosterone...
Objective: Identifying biomarkers that can distinguish trauma-exposed youth at risk for developing posttraumatic pathology from resilient individuals is essential for targeted interventions. As trauma can alter the microbiome with lasting effects on the host, our longitudinal, multimeasure, cross-species study aimed to identify the microbial signat...
Executive summary
Microbes are all pervasive in their distribution and influence on the functioning and well‐being of humans, life in general and the planet. Microbially‐based technologies contribute hugely to the supply of important goods and services we depend upon, such as the provision of food, medicines and clean water. They also offer mechani...
Background
A mother’s milk is considered the gold standard of nutrition in neonates and is a source of cytokines, immunoglobulins, growth factors, and other important components, yet little is known about the components of canine milk, specifically colostrum, and the knowledge related to its microbial and metabolic profiles is particularly underwhe...
Intestinal chronic inflammation is associated with microbial dysbiosis and accumulation of various immune cells including myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC), which profoundly impact the immune microenvironment, perturb homeostasis and increase the risk to develop colitis-associated colorectal cancer (CAC). However, the specific MDSCs–dysbiotic...
Objectives
To investigate the role of gut microbiota (GM) in pathogenesis of idiopathic short stature (ISS) by comparing GM of ISS children to their normal-height siblings.
Methods
This case-control study, conducted at the Schneider Children’s Medical Center’s Institute for Endocrinology and Diabetes between 4/2018-11/2020, involved 30 pairs of he...
Background
The effect of microbes on their human host is often mediated through changes in metabolite concentrations. As such, multiple tools have been proposed to predict metabolite concentrations from microbial taxa frequencies. Such tools typically fail to capture the dependence of the microbiome-metabolite relation on the environment.
Results...
Background
Previous studies linked chronic oral diseases to skin disorders such as psoriasis. However, data about oral health and oral microbiota in atopic dermatitis (AD) is sparse.
Objectives
To compare the oral health status and oral microbiota of AD patients and healthy controls.
Methods
This was a prospective sex and age- matched case-contro...
Acute gastrointestinal infection with intracellular pathogens like Salmonella Typhimurium triggers the release of the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin 1β (IL-1β). However, the role of IL-1β in intestinal defense against Salmonella remains unclear. Here, we show that IL-1β production is detrimental during Salmonella infection. Mice lacking IL-1β...
Acute graft-versus-host disease (aGvHD) is a serious complication of allogeneic hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation with limited treatment options. The gut microbiome plays a critical role in aGvHD pathogenesis. Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) has emerged as a potential therapeutic approach to restore gut microbial diversity. In this pro...
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition which is defined by decreased social communication and the presence of repetitive or stereotypic behaviors. Recent evidence has suggested that the gut-brain axis may be important in neurodevelopment in general and may play a role in ASD in particular. Here, we present a study of the g...
The gut microbiome has important roles in host metabolism and immunity, and microbial dysbiosis affects human physiology and health. Maternal immunity and microbial metabolites during pregnancy, microbial transfer during birth, and transfer of immune factors, microorganisms and metabolites via breastfeeding provide critical sources of early-life mi...
Recent research has unveiled conflicting evidence regarding the link between aggression and the gut microbiome. In our investigation, we meticulously examined the behavioral patterns of four groups of mice – wild-type, germ-free (GF), mice treated with antibiotics, and recolonized GF mice – to gain mechanistic insights into the impact of the gut mi...
Background
Giardia duodenalis (Gd) causes intestinal parasitosis. The involvement of the intestinal microbiome in determining the infection's clinical phenotype is unknown.
Objective
Investigate the fecal microbiome features in dogs with giardiasis.
Animals and Methods
Cross‐sectional study, including fecal samples of kenneled dogs with Gd diagno...
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition which is defined by decreased social communication and the presence of repetitive or stereotypic behaviors. Recent evidence has suggested that the gut-brain axis may be important in neurodevelopment in general and may play a role in ASD in particular. Here, we present a study of the g...
We previously reported that autologous-fecal-microbiota-transplantation (aFMT), following 6 m of lifestyle intervention, attenuated subsequent weight regain and insulin rebound for participants consuming a high-polyphenol green-Mediterranean diet. Here, we explored whether specific changes in the core (abundant) vs. non-core (low-abundance) gut mic...
Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus GG (LGG) is a Gram-positive beneficial bacterium that resides in the human intestinal tract and belongs to the family of lactic acid bacteria (LAB). This bacterium is a widely used probiotic and was suggested to provide numerous benefits for human health. However, as in most LAB strains, the molecular mechanisms that me...
The gut microbiota is intimately related to host wellbeing, in terms of physiology, immune function, and even social interactions. The strength of this relationship is dynamic, but the extent to which the microbiome is shaped by the identity of the host (nature) or its environment (nurture) remains largely unknown. Here we aimed to identify factors...
Background
A mother’s milk is considered the gold standard of nutrition in neonates and is a source of cytokines, immunoglobulins, growth factors, and other important components, yet little is known about the components of canine milk, specifically colostrum, and the knowledge related to its microbial and metabolic profiles is particularly underwhe...
Microbiota composition has been linked to physical activity, health measures, and biological age, but a shared profile has yet to be shown. The aim of this study was to examine the associations between microbiota composition and measures of function, such as a composite measure of physical capacity, and biological age in midlife, prior to onset of...
Background
Some microbiota compositions are associated with negative outcomes, including among others, obesity, allergies, and the failure to respond to treatment. Microbiota manipulation or supplementation can restore a community associated with a healthy condition. Such interventions are typically probiotics or fecal microbiota transplantation (F...
Accumulating evidence supports the role of microbiota in autoimmune processes, but research regarding the role of the gut microbiota in celiac disease (CD) is still emerging, and a consistent CD-associated dysbiosis pattern has not yet been defined. Here, we characterized the microbiota of children newly diagnosed with CD, with their unaffected fam...
Evidence from cross-sectional human studies, and preliminary microbial-based intervention studies, have implicated the microbiota-gut-brain axis in the neurobiology of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Using a prospective longitudinal study design, we investigated the developmental profile of the fecal microbiota and metabolome in infants with (n = 1...
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by heterogeneous cognitive, behavioral and communication impairments. Disruption of the gut–brain axis (GBA) has been implicated in ASD although with limited reproducibility across studies. In this study, we developed a Bayesian differential ranking algorithm to identify...
The human gut microbiome is associated with a large number of disease etiologies. As such, it is a natural candidate for machine-learning-based biomarker development for multiple diseases and conditions. The microbiome is often analyzed using 16S rRNA gene sequencing or shotgun metagenomics. However, several properties of microbial sequence-based s...
Undernutrition affects about one out of five children worldwide. It is associated with impaired growth, neurodevelopment deficits, and increased infectious morbidity and mortality. Undernutrition, however, cannot be solely attributed to a lack of food or nutrient deficiency but rather results from a complex mix of biological and environmental facto...
Background
Giardia duodenalis (Gd) causes intestinal parasitosis; nevertheless, the intestinal microbiome involvement in determining the clinical phenotype of infection is unknown. This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate fecal microbiome features in dogs with giardiasis and included fecal samples of kenneled dogs diagnosed with Gd by fecal...
Background:
Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is associated with reduced gut microbiota richness that was also reported to differ significantly between those living in rural compared to urban environments. Therefore, our aim was to examine the associations between greenness and maternal blood glucose levels and GDM, with microbiome diversity as...
Background
A growing body of evidence suggests that the gut microbiota plays a significant role in the development of autoimmune diseases. An altered microbiota composition has been associated with gastrointestinal and extraintestinal features in systemic sclerosis (SSc) patients.
Objectives
To characterize differences in the gut microbiota betwee...
Mouse models are key tools for investigating host-microbiome interactions. However, shotgun metagenomics can only profile a limited fraction of the mouse gut microbiome. Here, we employ a metagenomic profiling method, MetaPhlAn 4, which exploits a large catalog of metagenome-assembled genomes (including 22,718 metagenome-assembled genomes from mice...
Background
We previously demonstrated that patients with IgE-mediated food allergy (FA) have a unique gut microbial signature.
Objectives
To characterize the changes to the gut microbiome populations and putative immunoregulatory effects, associated with successful OIT.
Methods
Stool samples were collected at inception of treatment from 252 patie...
Lactobacillaceae are Gram-positive and lactic acid-positive (LAB) bacteria that frequently serve as probiotics. LAB strains vary in their responses to different carbohydrates as free-living and biofilm communities. We previously found that fermentable sugars triggered an altered carrying capacity with strain specificity during planktonic growth, ca...
Probiotic fermented foods are perceived as contributing to human health, however solid evidence for their presumptive therapeutic systemic benefits is generally lacking. Here we report that tryptophol acetate and tyrosol acetate, small molecule metabolites secreted by the probiotic milk-fermented yeast Kluyveromyces marxianus inhibit hyperinflammat...
The gut microbiota refers to an entire population of microorganisms that colonize the gut. This community includes viruses, prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea), and eukaryotes (fungi and parasites). Multiple studies in the last decades described the significant involvement of gut bacteria in gut-brain axis communication; however, the involvement of...
Background
A common feature of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) is dysbiosis of gut microbiota. IBD usually affects women during their childbearing years, but successful pregnancy outcomes have become a reality for many women with IBD. Pregnancy in general and pregnancy in IBD in particular, has been reported to dramatically affect gut microbial c...
Whether the human fetus and the prenatal intrauterine environment (amniotic fluid and placenta) are stably colonized by microbial communities in a healthy pregnancy remains a subject of debate. Here we evaluate recent studies that characterized microbial populations in human fetuses from the perspectives of reproductive biology, microbial ecology,...
Objective
Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is a condition in which women without diabetes are diagnosed with glucose intolerance during pregnancy, typically in the second or third trimester. Early diagnosis, along with a better understanding of its pathophysiology during the first trimester of pregnancy, may be effective in reducing incidence an...
Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus GG (LGG) is a Gram-positive beneficial bacterium that resides in the human intestinal tract and belongs to the family of lactic acid bacteria (LAB). This bacterium is a widely used probiotic and was suggested to provide numerous benefits for human health. However, as in most LAB strains, the molecular mechanisms that me...
The effect of microbes on their human host is often mediated through changes in metabolite concentrations. As such, multiple tools have been proposed to predict metabolitc profiles from microbial taxa frequencies, assuming a direct relation between the gut microbiome composition and blood metabolite concentrations. However, the microbiome-metabolit...
Background Some microbiome composition can be associated with negative outcomes, including among others, obesity, disease and the failure to respond to treatment. Microbiota manipulation or supplementation have been argued to restore the microbiome associated with a healthy condition. Fecal Microbiota Transplantation (FMT) is among the most popular...
Lactobacillaceae are Gram-positive rods, facultative anaerobes, and belong to the lactic acid bacteria (LAB) that frequently serve as probiotics. We systematically compared five LAB strains for the effects of different carbohydrates on their free-living and biofilm lifestyles. We found that fermentable sugars triggered an altered carrying capacity...
As part of the quest for sustainable food choices, edible insects draw increasing attention. Nevertheless, not enough is known regarding their digestive fate and specifically little is known on the colonic fermentability of edible insects or chitin, which is found in many insects or crustaceans. This study interrogated the properties and fermentabi...
Genistein is an isoflavone naturally present in numerous staple food crops, such as soybeans and chickpeas. This study utilized the Gallus gallus intraamniotic administration procedure to assess genistein administration effects on trace mineral status, brush border membrane (BBM) functionality, intestinal morphology, and intestinal microbiome in vi...
Survival analysis (SA) prediction involves the prediction of the time until an event of interest occurs (TTE), based on input attributes. The main challenge of SA is instances where the event is not observed (censored). Censoring can represent an alternative event (e.g., death) or missing data. Most SA prediction methods suffer from multiple drawba...
Identification of youth at risk for post-traumatic pathology is critical for public health, medicine, and social policy but research has not yet succeeded in pinpointing biomarkers that can distinguish the post-traumatic from the resilient profile in contexts of trauma. As trauma alters the microbiome with lasting effects on the host, the current l...
Lactobacillaceae are Gram-positive rods, facultative anaerobes, and belong to the lactic acid bacteria (LAB) that frequently serve as probiotics. We systematically compared five LAB strains for the effects of different carbohydrates on their free-living and biofilm lifestyles. We found that fermentable sugars triggered a heterogeneous response in L...
Objectives
Evaluating the effect of Stilbenes (Resveratrol and pterostilbene) on brush border membrane (BBM) functionality, morphology, mineral status and the microbiome in-vivo (Gallus gallus).
Methods
The study employed the in-vivo intra-amniotic approach (Gallus gallus) to meet the objective. Six treatment groups viz. No Injection, 18 MΩ H2O, 5...
The immune system matures throughout childhood to achieve full functionality in protecting our bodies against threats. The immune system has a strong reciprocal symbiosis with the host bacterial population and the two systems co-develop, shaping each other. Despite their fundamental role in health physiology, the ontogeny of these systems is poorly...
The human gut microbiome is associated with a large number of disease etiologies. As such, it is a natural candidate for machine learning based biomarker development for multiple diseases and conditions. The microbiome is often analyzed using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. However, several properties of microbial 16S rRNA gene sequencing hinder machine...
Aggression is a behavior common in most species; it is controlled by internal and external drivers, including hormones, environmental cues, and social interactions, and underlying pathways are understood in a broad range of species. To date, though, effects of gut microbiota on aggression in the context of gut-brain communication and social behavio...
Background
Previous studies have linked the Mediterranean diet (MED) with improved cardiometabolic health, showing preliminary evidence for a mediating role of the gut microbiome. We recently suggested the Green-Mediterranean (Green-MED) diet as an improved version of the healthy MED diet, with increased consumption of plant-based foods and reduced...
Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.), a gluten-free pseudo-cereal, has gained popularity over the last decade due to its high nutritional value. Quinoa is a rich source of proteins, carbohydrates, fibers, tocopherols (Vitamin E), unsaturated fatty acids and a wide range of polyphenols. The study used Gallus gallus intra-amniotic feeding, a clinically...
The gut microbiome is the collection of microorganisms, including bacteria, archaea, viruses and fungi, found within the gut and their overall genetic information. Our gut microbiota has broad effects on our health and well-being, impacting our immune system and metabolism, detoxifying various ingested components, and even affecting behavior. Chang...
Probiotic fermented foods are perceived as contributing to human health, however solid evidence for their presumptive therapeutic systemic benefits is generally lacking. Here we report that tryptophol acetate and tyrosol acetate, small molecule metabolites secreted by the probiotic milk-fermented yeast Kluyveromyces marxianus inhibit hyperinflammat...
The link between the gut microbiota and social behavior has been demonstrated, however the translational impact of a certain microbiota composition on stable behavioral patterns is yet to be elucidated. Here we employed an established social behavior mouse model of dominance (Dom) or submissiveness (Sub). A comprehensive 16S rRNA gene sequence anal...
The microbiome influences the emotional and cognitive phenotype of its host, as well as the neurodevelopment and pathophysiology of various brain processes and disorders, via the well‐established microbiome–gut–brain axis. Rapidly accumulating data link the microbiome to severe neuropsychiatric disorders in humans, including schizophrenia, Alzheime...
Preterm birth may result in adverse health outcomes. Very preterm infants typically exhibit postnatal growth restriction, metabolic disturbances, and exaggerated inflammatory responses. We investigated the differences in the meconium microbiota composition between very preterm (<32 weeks), moderately preterm (32–37 weeks), and term (>37 weeks) huma...
The particularly interdisciplinary nature of human microbiome research makes the organization and reporting of results spanning epidemiology, biology, bioinformatics, translational medicine and statistics a challenge. Commonly used reporting guidelines for observational or genetic epidemiology studies lack key features specific to microbiome studie...