Inherited Malnutrition

This is the lining of a mouse intestine (red) with replicating cells shown in green. The cells that line the gut replace themselves continuously to cope with the relentless aggravations and irritations of digestion. During infection and inflammation, however, this process ramps up leading to poor nutrient absorption. This seems to be the case in environmental enteric dysfunction (EED) – a form of chronic malnutrition common within impoverished populations of Africa and Asia. Recent studies have identified a key EED culprit – the bacteria Campylobacter concisus – and showed the condition can be passed from mother to baby, at least in mice modelling the disease. Interestingly, C. concisus is normally found in the human mouth, and only seems to cause problems when it proliferates in the intestine. Finding ways to improve the microbiomes of those suffering EED might prevent C. concisus propagation in the gut and therefore mitigate the inflammation and malnutrition.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image from work by Alexandra Byrne, PhD re article by Kali M. Pruss and Clara Kao, and colleagues
• The Edison Family Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO, USA
• Image originally published as 'Credit must be given to the creator' equating to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Research published in Nature Microbiology, June 2026