Azad Lab Trainee, Dr. Moossavi and co-authors optimized and applied culture-enriched molecular profiling to study culturable milk bacteria from human milk. The feasibility study was published in FEMS Microbiology Letters. This study was supported by the ISRHML Trainee Expansion Program and done in collaboration with the Surette Lab. Tweetorial here! 

Azad Lab trainees, Dr. Shirin Moossavi and Kelsy Fehr, published "Repeatability and reproducibility assessment in a large-scale population based microbiota study: case study on human milk microbiota" in Microbiome. This case study demonstrates the importance of their proposed quality-control framework to enhance reproducibility and reliability in low biomass microbiome research. Tweetorial here! 

Do you use artificial (non-nutritive) sweeteners? Did you use them while you were pregnant? Tracy Cassels, host of the Evolutionary Parenting Podcast, interviews Dr. Azad about her research in this field and the effects of non-nutritive sweetener use in pregnancy on babies. Listen to the interview on Soundcloud here! 

Drs. Azad and Brockway and others co-authored an article in The Conversation about the importance of breastfeeding research for advancing health and ultimately saving lives, and the counterproductive tensions that arise among researchers, advocates and industry in this field. This article stemmed from their experience co-writing a paper from a workshop about how researchers & stakeholders from different disciplines can collaborate to accelerate progress in the field of breastfeeding, lactation & human milk research. Follow the Tweetorial here! 

Azad Lab and Manitoba Interdisciplinary Lactation Centre (MILC) members published a correspondence in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition titled "Messaging and methodological considerations when researching breastfeeding and obesity." They addressed concerns about a potentially harmful message in a paper implying milk from mothers with an elevated BMI may predispose their infants to obesity, which is unsupported by the paper's data. Tweetorial coming soon!