Steatosis and gut microbiota dysbiosis induced by high fat diet are reversed by one-week chow diet administration

Abstract Many studies have recently shown that diet and its impact on gut microbiota are closely related to obesity and metabolic diseases including nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Gut microbiota may be an important intermediate link, causing gastrointestinal and metabolic diseases under the influence of changes in diet and genetic predisposition. The aim of this study was to assess the reversibility of liver phenotype in parallel with exploring the resilience of the mice gut microbiota by switching high fat diet (HFD) to chow diet (CD). Mice were fed a HF for 8 weeks. A part of the mice was euthanized, while the rest was then fed a CD. These mice were euthanized after 3 days and 7 days of feeding with CD, respectively. Gut microbiota composition, serum parameters as well as liver morphology were assessed. Eight weeks of HFD treatment induced marked liver steatosis in mice with a perturbed microbiome. Interestingly, only 7 days of CD was enough to recover the liver to a normal status while the microbiome was accordingly reshaped to a close to initial pattern. The abundance of some of the bacteria including Prevotella, Parabacteroides, Lactobacillus, Allobaculum were reversible upon diet change from HFD to CD. This suggests that microbiome modifications contribute to the metabolic effects of HFD feeding and that restoration of a normal microbiota may lead to improvement of the liver phenotype. Conclusion: In conclusion, we found that steatosis and gut microbiota dysbiosis induced by eight weeks of high fat diet can be reversed by one week chow diet administration and we identified gut bacteria associated with the metabolic phenotype.