New York, NY, United States, 10/02/2021 / Web Desk /
A recent study found that gut microbiota influences the ability to lose weight in humans. The findings of the study were published in mSystems, an open-access journal published by the American Society for Microbiology.
As reported by ScienceDaily, lead study author Christian Diener, Ph.D., a research scientist at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Washington said that “Your gut microbiome can help or cause resistance to weight loss and this opens up the possibility to try to alter the gut microbiome to impact weight loss.”
Dr. Diener and his colleagues who conducted the study focused on a large cohort of individuals who were all involved in a lifestyle intervention study. This intervention study involved a behavioral coaching program paired with advice from a dietician and nurse coach instead of a specific diet or exercise routine.
The researchers focused on 48 individuals who lost more than 1% of their body weight per month over a 6-to-12-month period and 57 individuals who didn’t lose any weight over the duration of the study and had a constant body mass index throughout the study. Researchers relied on metagenomics, the study of genetic material recovered from blood and stool samples. Blood metabolites, blood proteins, clinical labs, dietary questionnaires, and gut bacteria belonging to the two groups were analyzed by the researchers.
The researchers identified 31 baseline stool metagenomic functional features associated with weight loss after controlling for age, sex, and baseline BMI. These features included complex polysaccharide and protein degradation genes, stress-response genes, respiration-related genes, cell wall synthesis genes, and gut bacterial replication rates.
Researchers found out that the ability of gut microbiomes to break down starches was increased in people who did not lose weight. Another key finding was that the genes that help bacteria grow faster, multiply, replicate, and assemble cell walls were increased in people who lost weight.
Dr. Diener said “Before this study, we knew the composition of bacteria in the gut were different in obese people than in people who were non-obese, but now we have seen that there are a different set of genes that are encoded in the bacteria in our gut that also responds to weight loss interventions,”. He further added that “The gut microbiome is a major player in modulating whether a weight loss intervention will have success or not. The factors that dictate obesity versus non-obesity are not the same factors that dictate whether you will lose weight on lifestyle intervention.”
Research has already proved that one can change the composition of bacteria in the gut by making changes to the diet. Dr. Diener says that if someone has a composition of gut bacterial genes that are resistant to weight loss, then we can try to overcome this resistance by changing their diet and helping them lose weight.
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/09/210914135522.htm
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mSystems.00964-21?_ga=2.43679840.412136223.1632502823-1122119690.1632502820
Source: Story.KISSPR.com
