Vitamins for the Gut Microbiome

The gut microbiome has an important role in health, and diet represents a key lever for shaping the gut microbiome across all stages of life. Maternal milk consumption in neonates leads to long-term health effects, indicating that pliability in the infant gut microbiome in response to diet can drive enduring change. The ability of diet to drive lasting changes in the adult gut microbiome is less understood. We studied the effect of an extreme dietary shift on the fecal microbiome of 46 Labrador retriever dogs (mean age, 4.6 years) over 11 months. Dogs were fed a nutritionally complete, commercially available complex diet (CD) for a minimum of 5 weeks, followed by highly purified diets (PDs) for 36 weeks, and the initial CD for at least a further 4 weeks. Fecal samples were collected at regular intervals for DNA extraction. By analyzing 16S rRNA genes and the metagenomes, we observed minor effects on microbial diversity but significant changes in bacterial taxa and genetic potential when a PD was fed. Specifically, metagenomics identified an enrichment of quinone- and GABA-related pathways on PD, providing insights into dietary effects on cross-feeding strategies impacting community structure. When dogs returned to the CD, no significant differences were found with the initial time point. These findings are consistent with the gut microbiome being rapidly adaptable but capable of being reconstituted when provided with similar diets. These data highlight that long-term changes in the adult dog gut microbiome may only be achieved through long-term maintenance on a specified diet, rather than through feeding a transitionary diet.IMPORTANCE Diet can influence the adult gut microbiome (the community of bacteria) and health outcomes, but the ability to make changes persisting beyond feeding of a particular diet is poorly understood. We investigated whether feeding highly purified diets to adult dogs for 36 weeks would alter bacterial populations sufficiently to result in a persistent change following the dogs' return to a commercial diet. As expected, the microbiome changed when the purified diet was fed, but the original microbiome was reconstituted within weeks of the dogs returning to the commercial diet. The significance of these findings is in identifying an intrinsic stability of the host microbiome in healthy dogs, suggesting that dietary changes to support adult dog health through modifying the gut microbiome may be achieved only through maintenance on a specified diet, rather than through feeding transitionary diets.

Gut microbiome

Intestinal Microbiome

Gut microflora

10.1128/aem.00562-20

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Citations (35)

Sa1911 – Analysis of the Small Intestinal Microbiome Reveals Marked Differences from Stool Microbiome in a Large Scale Human Cohort: Redefining the “Gut Microbiome”

Gastroenterology (2019)

Gabriela Leite Stacy Weitsman Shreya Celly Walter Morales Rashin Sedighi

Intestinal Microbiome

Gut microbiome

10.1016/s0016-5085(19)37977-6

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Citations (5)

<p>Why targeting the microbiome is not so successful: can randomness overcome the adaptation that occurs following gut manipulation?</p>

Clinical and Experimental Gastroenterology (2019)

Yaron Ilan

The microbiome is explored as a potential target for therapy of bowel and systemic diseases. Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) has demonstrated efficacy in Clostridium difficile infection. However, clinical results regarding other diseases are modest, despite the abundant research on the microbiome over the last decade. Both high rate variability of the microbiome and adaptation to gut manipulations may underlie the lack of ultimate effects of FMT, probiotics, prebiotics, synbiotics, and antibiotics, which are aimed at restoring a healthier microbiome. The present review discusses the inherent variability of the microbiome and multiple factors that affect its diversity, as possible causes of the adaptation of the gut microbiome to chronic manipulation. The potential use of randomness is proposed, as a means of overcoming the adaptation and of restoring some of the inherent variability, with the goal of improving the long-term efficacy of these therapies.

Intestinal Microbiome

Synbiotics

Gut microbiome

Dysbiosis

Fecal bacteriotherapy

10.2147/ceg.s203823

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Citations (60)

Microbiome-based stratification to guide dietary interventions to improve human health

Nutrition Research (2020)

Zhuang Liu Berna de Vries Jacoline Gerritsen Hauke Smidt Erwin G. Zoetendal

Diverse evidence has suggested that the gut microbiome is closely associated with overall human health. Modulation of the gut microbiome through nutritional intervention is recognized as a robust and attainable strategy to prevent disorders/diseases and improve human health. However, universal dietary recommendations demonstrated to have different, sometimes even opposite, effects due to the considerable inter-individual variability between subjects, especially in the gut microbiome. Hence, implementation of personalized nutrition or other treatment strategies have been suggested to tackle the individuality problem. A first step into this direction includes the stratification of subjects into specific groups based on their gut microbiome. The gut microbiome could serve as a pool of potential biomarkers for distinguishing "responders" and "non-responders" to specific treatments, which subsequently can be used to classify subjects with ambition to increase treatment efficacy. In this review, we explain the need for human gut microbiome stratification, introduce the concepts and show with specific examples potential options of microbiome-based stratifications. Finally, we propose a strategy for how microbiome-based stratification can be introduced to obtain improvements in dietary efficacy that can be implemented in real-life settings.

Gut microbiome

Human Microbiome Project

Risk Stratification

Stratification (seeds)

10.1016/j.nutres.2020.07.004

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Citations (26)

Therapeutic implications of the gastrointestinal microbiome

Current Opinion in Pharmacology (2018)

Purna Kashyap Eamonn M.M. Quigley

Gut microbiome

Intestinal Microbiome