肥胖是心血管病、糖尿病、骨质疏松症和包括一些癌症在内的其他疾病的一个风险因素。必须有其他影响因素存在，才能确定肥胖者会患哪种代谢疾病。本期Nature上两篇论文分析这些因素中的一个所起作用，这个因素就是肠道微生物群的丰富程度。Le Chatelier等人分析了非肥胖者和肥胖者的肠道微生物基因组成，发现在基因和种类丰富程度上存在显着差别。丰富程度较低人士的肥胖程度、胰岛素抗性、血脂异常和炎症程度都有所提高。微生物丰富程度较低的肥胖者比微生物丰富程度较高者更容易增加体重。作者还发现，仅仅对少数几种细菌标记进行分析，就足以区分细菌丰富程度的高低。Cotillard等人对肥胖或超重人士由饮食诱导的体重降低和采用使体重保持稳定的干预措施过程中的肠道微生物特征进行了监测。他们报告说，高纤维食物（如水果和蔬菜）的消耗增加导致细菌丰富程度增加，并且改善一些与肥胖相关的临床症状。该发现支持将饮食与肠道微生物群的组成联系起来的以前的研究工作，并且说明通过适当的饮食也许能实现永久性的改变。（生物谷）
生物谷推荐英文摘要：
Nature
Richness of human gut microbiome correlates with metabolic markers
Emmanuelle Le Chatelier,Trine Nielsen,Junjie Qin,Edi Prifti,Falk Hildebrand, Gwen Falony,Mathieu Almeida, Manimozhiyan Arumugam,Jean-Michel Batto, Sean Kennedy, Pierre Leonard, Junhua Li, Kristoffer Burgdorf, Niels Grarup,Torben Jrgensen,Ivan Brandslund, Henrik Bjarn Nielsen,Agnieszka S. Juncker, Marcelo Bertalan, Florence Levenez, Nicolas Pons, Simon Rasmussen, Shinichi Sunagawa,Julien Tap, Sebastian Tims et al.
We are facing a global metabolic health crisis provoked by an obesity epidemic. Here we report the human gut microbial composition in a population sample of 123 non-obese and 169 obese Danish individuals. We find two groups of individuals that differ by the number of gut microbial genes and thus gut bacterial richness. They contain known and previously unknown bacterial species at different proportions; individuals with a low bacterial richness (23% of the population) are characterized by more marked overall adiposity, insulin resistance and dyslipidaemia and a more pronounced inflammatory phenotype when compared with high bacterial richness individuals. The obese individuals among the lower bacterial richness group also gain more weight over time. Only a few bacterial species are sufficient to distinguish between individuals with high and low bacterial richness, and even between lean and obese participants. Our classifications based on variation in the gut microbiome identify subsets of individuals in the general white adult population who may be at increased risk of progressing to adiposity-associated co-morbidities.
Dietary intervention impact on gut microbial gene richness
Nature
Aurélie Cotillard,Sean P. Kennedy, Ling Chun Kong,Edi Prifti,Nicolas Pons, Emmanuelle Le Chatelier,Mathieu Almeida, Benoit Quinquis, Florence Levenez, Nathalie Galleron, Sophie Gougis, Salwa Rizkalla,Jean-Michel Batto, Pierre Renault,ANR MicroObes consortium,Joel Doré,Jean-Daniel Zucker, Karine Clément, Stanislav Dusko Ehrlich, Hervé Blottière, Marion Leclerc,Catherine Juste,Tomas de Wouters,Patricia Lepage, Charlene Fouqueray et al.
Complex gene–environment interactions are considered important in the development of obesity1. The composition of the gut microbiota can determine the efficacy of energy harvest from food2, 3, 4 and changes in dietary composition have been associated with changes in the composition of gut microbial populations5, 6. The capacity to explore microbiota composition was markedly improved by the development of metagenomic approaches7, 8, which have already allowed production of the first human gut microbial gene catalogue9 and stratifying individuals by their gut genomic profile into different enterotypes10, but the analyses were carried out mainly in non-intervention settings. To investigate the temporal relationships between food intake, gut microbiota and metabolic and inflammatory phenotypes, we conducted diet-induced weight-loss and weight-stabilization interventions in a study sample of 38 obese and 11 overweight individuals. Here we report that individuals with reduced microbial gene richness (40%) present more pronounced dys-metabolism and low-grade inflammation, as observed concomitantly in the accompanying paper11. Dietary intervention improves low gene richness and clinical phenotypes, but seems to be less efficient for inflammation variables in individuals with lower gene richness. Low gene richness may therefore have predictive potential for the efficacy of intervention.
