First randomized trial finds singing therapy for chronic belching

Behavioral therapy provides greater symptom relief and quality-of-life improvements for people with supragastric belching

American Gastroenterological Association

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The first randomized controlled trial of singing therapy for supragastric belching found that this engaging behavioral approach provided greater symptom relief than standard breathing exercises for people with this distressing gastrointestinal disorder.

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Bethesda, MD (July 20, 2026) — A new randomized clinical trial suggests that singing therapy may provide a more effective and engaging treatment option than standard breathing exercises for people with supragastric belching, a chronic gastrointestinal disorder that can significantly affect quality of life. 

The study, which will be published in the American Gastroenterological Association’s journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, is the first randomized controlled trial to evaluate singing therapy for supragastric belching. This condition causes rapid, excessive belching — sometimes hundreds to thousands of times a day — as air repeatedly enters and exits the esophagus rather than the stomach. Researchers found that structured singing therapy provided significantly greater short-term symptom relief compared with diaphragmatic breathing therapy, the current first-line behavioral treatment for the condition. 

The study included 72 adults diagnosed with supragastric belching who were randomly assigned to receive either structured singing therapy or diaphragmatic breathing therapy. Participants completed treatment and were followed for one month to assess symptom severity, quality of life, and treatment acceptability.  

After one week, 72.2% of patients receiving singing therapy achieved at least a 50% reduction in symptom severity compared with 38.9% of patients receiving diaphragmatic breathing therapy. At one-month follow-up, response rates remained higher among patients receiving singing therapy (50% vs. 30.6%). 

Patients receiving singing therapy also experienced greater improvements in quality of life and were more likely to describe the intervention as enjoyable. 

Researchers explored singing therapy as an alternative approach because it combines respiratory control with an interactive activity that may be easier for patients to engage with over time. The study found that both singing therapy and diaphragmatic breathing improved symptoms, but singing therapy provided greater and more sustained benefits. 

The study identified three predictors of treatment response: receiving singing therapy, older age, and greater baseline symptom severity. Researchers noted that older patients and those with more severe symptoms may be particularly likely to benefit from the intervention. 

The researchers note several limitations, including the short follow-up period, enrollment of participants from a single cultural population, and the inability to blind participants to the behavioral interventions. Future studies are needed to evaluate long-term outcomes and determine how singing therapy can be adapted for broader populations.  

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AGA Media Contact: Annie Mehl, communications and media relations manager, media@gastro.org, 301-327-0013   

About the AGA Institute   
The American Gastroenterological Association is the trusted voice of the GI community. Founded in 1897, AGA represents members from around the globe who are involved in all aspects of the science, practice, and advancement of gastroenterology. The AGA Institute administers the practice, research, and educational programs of the organization. www.gastro.org   

About Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology 
The mission of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology (CGH) is to provide readers with a broad spectrum of themes in clinical gastroenterology and hepatology, including the diagnostic, endoscopic, interventional, and therapeutic advances in cancer, inflammatory diseases, functional gastrointestinal disorders, nutrition, absorption, and secretion. More 

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Journal

Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology

Article Title

Singing Therapy Versus Diaphragmatic Breathing for Supragastric Belching: A Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial

Article Publication Date

22-Jul-2026

 

Prevalence and associated factors of intentional outdoor tanning among US adults

JAMA Dermatology

About The Study: 

This cross-sectional study found that the highest prevalence of intentional outdoor tanning occurs among U.S. women who are younger, non-Hispanic white, and physically active and report heavy and/or binge drinking. Those who engage in intentional outdoor tanning are more likely to experience sunburn, increasing their skin cancer risk. These findings can inform future strategies to address intentional outdoor tanning as part of larger efforts to reduce skin cancer risk.

Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Dawn M. Holman, MPH, email dholman@cdc.gov.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamadermatol.2026.2450)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

#  #  #

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article This link will be live at the embargo time https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/fullarticle/10.1001/jamadermatol.2026.2450?guestAccessKey=50f461db-4c55-467a-aee7-d1f2de6baf59&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=072226

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Journal

JAMA Dermatology

 

Breath, not blood: Device measures fat burning in exhaled air

ETH Zurich

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The Nutrion breath acetone analyser is operated via a smartphone app and allows the self-monitoring of breath acetone as a biomarker for fat metabolism.

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Credit: Alivion AG

 

Acetone is the by-product of fat metabolism that is exhaled via the lungs. It is made when the body burns fat instead of carbohydrates such as sugar. Researchers from ETH Zurich have developed a breath test device that can detect acetone in exhaled air with high precision. The device is very reminiscent of the alcohol breathalysers used by the police in traffic checks and can be operated reliably by non-experts in combination with a smartphone app. People can therefore monitor their fat metabolism without professional support or blood tests. This could eventually allow diets, treatments for metabolic disorders like diabetes, and ketogenic therapies used for example for epilepsy to be monitored more closely and tailored to individual patients. 

“When it comes to diets, there’s no rule of thumb that works for everybody. Ideally, people should self-monitor to see how their own metabolism responds,” explains Andreas Güntner, Professor of Molecular Sensing at ETH Zurich’s Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering. “Methods are also needed that can be carried out independently and that produce reliable results, similar to blood glucose measurements for diabetics.” Güntner’s research group developed the measuring device in collaboration with the ETH spin-off Alivion, and tested its reliability together with the University Hospital Zurich. 

Precise measurements outside the lab 

In a validation study involving 12 adults, the researchers compared 312 breath readings recorded with the new measuring device with blood test results and measurements from a high-precision mass spectrometer – the analytical gold standard. The measurements were carried out using different metabolic scenarios: with light and intensive physical activity and various diets. This revealed that the results from the hand-held device were practically identical to those from the lab. In addition, the new measuring device delivered reliable results over a period of months. 

 

In essence, the recently tested hand-held device is based on a sensor technology that has been in development at ETH Zurich for over 10 years and was presented for the first time in 2017. Already at the time, Güntner and his co-authors were able to demonstrate that the gas sensors they had developed were so sensitive that they could detect a single acetone molecule in a hundred million other molecules. 

Reproducible readings thanks to filter and app

According to the researchers, readings from currently available acetone breathalysers have only limited reproducibility and can only detect pronounced metabolic changes. They not only respond to acetone, but also to other components of exhaled air, for example if test subjects ate or drunk something beforehand. 

The researchers therefore developed a filter that blocks interfering molecules, and a smartphone app that guides test subjects in real time as they exhale. “The device measures the volume of exhaled air and only takes a sample that comes from deep in the lungs after a certain time,” says lead author Simone Hersberger, adding: “otherwise, every reading would be slightly different.” In order for this to work, the devices are initially calibrated and adjusted to the patient’s lung volume.

From basic research to product  

The successful validation study is an important milestone for the researchers. “We were able to demonstrate that our device can detect slight differences in fat metabolism accurately and reliably,” says ETH doctoral student Hersberger. Further studies are now intended to show whether the new measuring device can really be used to personalise therapies for metabolic disorders. In partnership with the University Children’s Hospital Zurich, the researchers are currently looking at whether the hand-held device can help children with epilepsy better monitor their ketogenic diet. Other fields of application are the monitoring and optimisation of medical diets or of so-called GLP-1 therapies with weight loss jabs. Applications in amateur sports are also being considered.

The ETH spin-off Alivion AG has launched the device under the name ‘Nutrion’. It is currently being deployed in international research studies and in medical facilities. To scale up further and to open up further fields of application, Alivion is seeking additional industry partners and strategic investors. “This example shows how the results of basic research can be put into practice and ultimately help society,” says ETH professor Andreas Güntner.

This work is being financially supported by Innosuisse, the Vontobel Foundation and the Accentus Foundation.

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DOI

10.1016/j.device.2026.101226 

Article Title

Self-monitoring of Fat Metabolic Status with Smartphone-assisted Breath Acetone Detector

Breathalyzer that sniffs out when your body starts burning fat

Cell Press

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A user performs a breath measurement with the smartphone-assisted breath acetone analyzer.

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Credit: Alivion AG

Researchers have developed a breath detector with a chemical sensor that sniffs out when your body is burning fat through a single exhale. Reporting on July 22 in the Cell Press journal Device, the handheld, smartphone-assisted device measures acetone—a molecule that is released into the breath when the body burns fat—in about 90 seconds with laboratory-level accuracy. The technology could help people monitor their metabolism and allow clinicians to personalize treatments for obesity, diabetes, epilepsy, and other metabolic conditions. 

Scientists have long used breath acetone as a window into metabolism because its concentration rises as the body shifts from using carbohydrates to fat. But doing so typically requires bulky laboratory instruments or consumer devices that work reliably only at very high acetone levels.  

“If we want to make that information available to patients, we need to shrink those technologies into compact, user-friendly devices,” says senior author Andreas Güntner of ETH Zurich. After 10 years of engineering, the team finally built a portable, highly sensitive breath acetone detector for everyday use. 

To evaluate the detector, the team tested it with 12 healthy adults under real-world conditions. The handheld detector measured acetone concentrations from 0.2 to 45 parts per million across 312 breath samples. The measurements closely matched those from mass spectrometry—the laboratory gold standard for breath acetone analysis. 

The team then monitored breath acetone in four metabolic scenarios: light exercise followed by a high-carb meal, intense exercise followed by a high-carb meal, a fat-rich ketogenic meal, and fasting. They compared the breath measurements with metabolic markers, including blood ketone and glucose, to determine how well the detector tracked changes. 

Breath acetone remained low after light exercise followed by a high-carb meal but rose in scenarios of intense exercise, reflecting the body’s increased reliance on fat as a fuel source. Following intense exercise, the participants’ acetone levels dropped after a high-carb meal, remained elevated after a fat-rich meal, and continued to increase during fasting, mirroring changes seen in blood and glucose markers. 

“These findings show that we have the high performance needed for applications such as clinical studies, where you really want to distinguish these slight differences in fat metabolism,” says first author Simone Hersberger of ETH Zurich. 

For real-world applications, Hersberger says that ease of use and controlled breath sampling are key priorities. During every measurement, the smartphone app coaches users to exhale with the right force and duration for reproducibility. Built-in quality controls can even reject improper breaths or contaminated air to ensure reliable data.  

The technology has already moved beyond the laboratory. ETH spin-off Alivion AG has commercialized the breath acetone analyzer under the name “Nutrion.” This handheld device is now being used in clinical studies for epilepsy and by individuals interested in tracking their breath acetone levels as a marker of fat metabolism for weight loss and athletic performance. 

“Now it's really time to spread it out into clinical trials and answer questions such as the effectiveness of different fasting therapies by providing personalized guidance,” says Güntner. “We're really moving toward healthcare solutions that, in the future, you won't need to go to the hospital for anymore. You'll be able to do them at home.” 

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This work was supported by funding from Innosuisse, the Vontobel-Stiftung, Stiftung Accentus Fonds Thimonia, Verena Guggisberg-Luthi, and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI). 

Device, Hersberger et al., “Self-monitoring of fat metabolic status with smartphone-assisted breath acetone detector” https://www.cell.com/device/fulltext/S2666-9986(26)00178-X

Device (@Device_CP), is a physical science journal from Cell Press along with Chem, Joule, and Matter. Device aims to be the breakthrough journal to support device- and application-oriented research from all disciplines, including applied physics, applied materials, nanotechnology, robotics, energy research, chemistry, and biotechnology under a single title that focuses on the integration of these diverse disciplines in the creation of the cutting-edge technology of tomorrow. Visit http://www.cell.com/device/home. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com. 

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Journal

Device

DOI

10.1016/j.device.2026.101226 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Self-monitoring of fat metabolic status with smartphone-assisted breath acetone detector

Article Publication Date

22-Jul-2026

 

A secret weapon against superbugs

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

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Antibiotic resistance has quietly become one of the greatest threats to global healthcare. Each year, drug-resistant bacteria claim lives by rendering once-reliable antibiotics ineffective, turning routine surgeries, cancer treatments, and even common infections into potentially life-threatening events.

Scientists around the world are racing to find new ways to stay ahead of these evolving pathogens. The answer may not lie in discovering an entirely new antibiotic, but in reinventing the chemistry behind the ones we already have. That’s the promise of antibiotic adjuvants. Rather than kill bacteria themselves, these partner molecules restore the effectiveness of existing antibiotics.

The approach relies on chemistry research like that of Professor John Moses at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), where he and his team have spent years developing new chemical reactions that accelerate drug discovery.

Using a methodology known as diversity oriented clicking (DOC), developed in the Moses laboratory, researchers have synthesized a molecular library of more than 150 compounds. This library already underpins discoveries in both antibiotic resistance and cancer research.

In collaboration with Scripps Research, this library has now helped restore the activity of vancomycin, a powerful antibiotic widely used to treat serious infections such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile (C. diff). These well-known pathogens can evolve into antibiotic-resistant “superbugs,” overcoming frontline treatments like vancomycin and spreading rapidly through hospitals, nursing homes, and the wider community.

In their new study, researchers from the Moses lab at CSHL and Professor Howard Hang’s group at Scripps discovered a way to restore the activity of vancomycin by inhibiting a key bacterial enzyme known as secreted antigen A (SagA) with a small molecule called pghi-4. Pghi-4 was originally discovered in the Moses laboratory in 2020. When the team treated drug-resistant E. faecium with the combination of vancomycin and pghi-4, the antibiotic’s ability to kill the bacteria was restored.

For Moses, what makes this discovery particularly exciting is that it didn’t begin with the search for a new antibiotic.

“This discovery came from fundamental chemical research,” he explains. “Reaction development led to the discovery of the first inhibitor of an important enzyme involved in antibiotic resistance. This is a process we’re constantly refining to both keep our library of molecules up to date and add more for collaborators to take advantage of in their research.”

By opening their molecular library for collaborative research, the hope is that similar strategies may one day lead to effective treatments for other superbugs, including drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis.

“This work reflects a philosophy of chemistry that’s designed to accelerate drug discovery in its purest form,” says Moses. “By using reliable, robust, and intelligent chemical reactions, we can build new molecules more efficiently. That’s exactly the approach we used here.”

As antibiotic resistance continues to rise worldwide, the study serves as a reminder that tomorrow’s medical breakthroughs may begin not in a hospital, but rather at a lab bench, where a chemist is simply asking what new molecules are possible.

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Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-026-74057-1 

 

How a pandemic detour helped researchers uncover clues to a mysterious disease

Michigan State University

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EAST LANSING, Mich. – When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down international travel in 2020, Michigan State University researcher Eric Benbow faced a problem.

A $2.5 million research project designed to study an environmental pathogen in South America was suddenly on hold. With fieldwork canceled and uncertainty surrounding when travel might resume, Benbow and his collaborators needed a new plan.

That unexpected detour led to a surprising discovery — and new insights into a disease that has puzzled scientists for decades.

In a study published in Communications Medicine, an international team of researchers examined the environmental and human factors that influence the distribution of Buruli ulcer, a neglected tropical disease caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium ulcerans. The work helps explain how ecosystems, climate, land use and human activities interact to shape disease risk.

“People often think about infectious diseases in terms of person-to-person transmission,” said Benbow, professor in the Department of Entomology in the College Agriculture and Natural Resources and in the Department of Osteopathic Medical Specialties in the College of Osteopathic Medicine. “But this pathogen lives in the environment. To understand the disease, we have to understand the ecosystem.”

Buruli ulcer is most common in parts of West and Central Africa and can cause severe skin ulcers, scarring and disability. Yet despite decades of study, scientists still do not fully understand how people become infected.

“It’s been called the ‘mysterious disease’ for decades because no one really knew how it was transmitted,” Benbow said.

Using hundreds of environmental variables, researchers identified patterns linking disease occurrence to factors such as flooding, land disturbance, agriculture, invasive plant species and climate conditions.

The findings support a growing body of research showing that environmental change can influence where pathogens persist and where people are most likely to encounter them.

“We’ve been taking a One Health approach to this disease for more than 15 years,” Benbow said. “You can’t separate human health from environmental health.”

The study also builds on an unexpected discovery made during the pandemic.

Unable to travel to South America, Benbow’s team shifted its attention to the southeastern United States after uncovering an old study suggesting the pathogen might exist there. Using newer molecular tools, the researchers sampled aquatic habitats across the region and confirmed the bacterium’s presence.

“We found it,” Benbow said.

The researchers later found other areas in the U.S. that are favorable and, therefore, were able to expand the known environmental range of the pathogen. Combined with the study’s global modeling results, the findings suggest that suitable environmental conditions for Mycobacterium ulcerans may exist in more places than previously recognized, even where human cases of Buruli ulcer have not been reported.

That discovery aligned with the new global modeling work, which identified portions of the southeastern United States as environmentally suitable for the pathogen, despite no known locally acquired human cases of Buruli ulcer.

The question now is why.

“Why are people getting the disease in some places and not others?” Benbow said. “That’s one of the major questions we’re trying to answer.”

While the study focuses on Buruli ulcer, Benbow says the broader implications extend far beyond a single disease.

“We’re using Buruli ulcer as a model system,” he said. “The larger question is how environmental change influences disease risk.”

Researchers increasingly recognize that human health is connected to the health of ecosystems. Changes such as agricultural expansion, invasive species, urban growth, mining and shifting climate conditions can alter where pathogens persist, how they disperse and how people encounter them.

By identifying the environmental conditions associated with disease-causing organisms, scientists can better anticipate future risks, improve surveillance efforts and help public health officials focus resources in areas where disease emergence may be more likely.

“The goal isn’t just to understand where a disease is today,” Benbow said. “It’s to understand the conditions that allow it to emerge so we can be better prepared for what’s coming next. These pathogens don’t suddenly appear out of nowhere. Many are already part of the natural environment. The challenge is understanding what conditions allow them to become a threat. When we alter landscapes, we can sometimes wake sleeping giants.”

The study included researchers from Michigan State University, Mississippi State University, the University of Montpellier and several international institutions.

MSU has a satellite uplink/LTN TV studio and Comrex line for radio interviews upon request.

Contact: Kim Ward: 734-224-8377, kward@msu.edu

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Michigan State University has been advancing the common good with uncommon will for more than 170 years. Among the world’s top 100 universities and a leading U.S. public research institution, MSU pushes the limits of discovery and innovation to advance the state of Michigan and the nation, and make a better, safer, healthier world for all. The university provides life-changing educational opportunities through an inclusive academic community with more than 400 programs of study and is the largest producer of talent for Michigan, educating more undergraduates than any other university in the state.

 

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For MSU news on the web, go to MSUToday or x.com/MSUnews.

 

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Journal

Communications Medicine

DOI

10.1038/s43856-026-01692-6 

Article Title

Human-induced pressures and environmental factors drive the distribution of neglected tropical disease Buruli ulcer