Posted on 07/11/2024 5:54:47 AM PDT by Red Badger
A comprehensive study across diverse populations linked specific bacterial strains and bacteriophages within the gut microbiome to type 2 diabetes risk, suggesting potential pathways for intervention. By studying a large and varied cohort, researchers have identified novel microbial species associated with diabetes and highlighted the importance of personalized microbiome profiles in disease prevention and management.
Researchers from Brigham, Broad, and Harvard Chan School have discovered that certain species and strains of bacteria are associated with alterations in the gut microbiome’s function and an individual’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
The most extensive and diverse study yet on the gut microbiome of individuals with type 2 diabetes (T2D), prediabetes, and normal glucose levels has discovered that certain viruses and bacterial genetic variants are associated with changes in gut microbiome functionality and the risk of T2D.
Results of the study—which represents a collaboration across Brigham and Women’s Hospital (a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system), the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health—are published in Nature Medicine.
“The microbiome is highly variable across different geographic locations and racial and ethnic groups. If you only study a small, homogeneous population, you will probably miss something,” said co-corresponding author Daniel (Dong) Wang, MD, ScD, of the Channing Division of Network Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Broad, and Harvard Chan School. “Our study is by far the largest and most diverse study of its kind.”
“The gut microbiome’s relationship to complex, chronic, heterogeneous diseases like T2D is quite subtle,” said co-corresponding author Curtis Huttenhower, PhD of Harvard Chan School and Broad. “Much like studies of large human populations have been crucial for understanding human genetic variation, large and diverse populations are necessary—and increasingly feasible—for detailed microbiome variation studies as well.”
Global Impact and Study Details
T2D affects approximately 537 million people worldwide. In T2D, the body gradually loses its ability to regulate blood sugar effectively. Research over the last decade has linked changes in the gut microbiome—the collection of bacteria, fungi, and viruses that inhabit our intestines—to the development of T2D. However, prior studies of the gut microbiome and its role in T2D have been too small and varied in study design to draw significant conclusions.
This paper analyzed data from the newly established Microbiome and Cardiometabolic Disease Consortium (MicroCardio). The investigation included newly generated data and those originally captured during several other experiments, encompassing a total of 8,117 gut microbiome metagenomes from ethnically and geographically diverse participants. People included in the study had T2D, prediabetes, or no changes in their blood sugar levels and hailed from the U.S., Israel, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, France, and China. Co-first authors on the paper are Zhendong Mei, PhD, of the Channing Division of Network Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Broad, as well as Fenglei Wang, PhD, of Harvard Chan School and Broad.
“With this large study, we asked two questions. One is, ‘What are the roles of species and strains that make up the gut microbiome in type 2 diabetes?’ The other question is, ‘What are these microbes doing?’” Wang said. “When we analyzed this data, we found a relatively consistent set of microbial species linked to type 2 diabetes across our study populations. Many of those species have never been reported before.”
To understand the role of these microbes in the gut, the team analyzed species’ functional abilities. Different strains of a microbial species can have varied functions, like the ability to make a specific amino acid. The team found that certain strains had functions that may be linked to varied T2D disease risk.
One major functional difference they saw was that a strain of Prevotella copri—a common microbe in the gut that has the capacity to produce large amounts of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs)—was more commonly seen in diabetes patients’ gut microbiomes. Previous studies have shown that people with chronically high blood levels of BCAAs have a higher risk of obesity and T2D.
The researchers also found evidence suggesting that bacteriophages—viruses that infect bacteria—could be driving some of the changes they detected within certain strains of gut bacteria.
Bacteriophages and Their Surprising Role
“Our findings related to bacteriophages were very surprising,” Wang said. “This could mean that the virus infects the bacteria and changes its function in a way that increases or decreases type 2 diabetes risk, but more work is needed to understand this connection.”
In another analysis, the team studied a small subset of samples from patients newly diagnosed with T2D to assess microbiomes that are less likely to have been impacted by medication use or long-term high glucose status. Their results were similar to their larger findings, according to Wang.
“We believe that changes in the gut microbiome cause type 2 diabetes,” said Wang. “The changes to the microbiome may happen first, and diabetes develops later, not the other way around—although future prospective or interventional studies are needed to prove this relation firmly.”
“If these microbial features are causal, we can find a way to change the microbiome and reduce type 2 diabetes risk,” he added. “The microbiome is amenable to intervention—meaning you can change your microbiome, for example, with dietary changes, probiotics, or fecal transplants.”
One major limitation of the study is that, for the most part, it looked at patients’ microbiomes at one point in time. It didn’t look at changes to the gut microbiome or disease status over time. Future studies that build on this work include studying this link over an extended period and examining the strain-specific functions to understand better how they lead to T2D.
“A benefit and a challenge of the human microbiome is that it is highly personalized,” said Huttenhower. “The fact that we each have highly distinct microbial communities and microbial genetics means that very large population studies are needed to find consistent patterns. But once we do, individual microbiomes have the potential to be reshaped to help reduce disease risk.”
Reference:
“Strain-specific gut microbial signatures in type 2 diabetes identified in a cross-cohort analysis of 8,117 metagenomes” by Zhendong Mei, Fenglei Wang, Amrisha Bhosle, Danyue Dong, Raaj Mehta, Andrew Ghazi, Yancong Zhang, Yuxi Liu, Ehud Rinott, Siyuan Ma, Eric B. Rimm, Martha Daviglus, Walter C. Willett, Rob Knight, Frank B. Hu, Qibin Qi, Andrew T. Chan, Robert D. Burk, Meir J. Stampfer, Iris Shai, Robert C. Kaplan, Curtis Huttenhower and Dong D. Wang, 25 June 2024, Nature Medicine.
DOI: 10.1038/s41591-024-03067-7
Disclosures: Huttenhower is a scientific advisory board member for Zoe Nutrition, Empress Therapeutics, and Seres Therapeutics. The other authors declare no competing interests.
Funding:
Funding provided by National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (R00 DK119412) and
Boston Nutrition Obesity Research Center Pilot & Feasibility Program (P30 DK046200; R24 DK110499),
National Institute of Nursing Research (R01 NR01999),
National Institute on Aging (R01 AG077489; RF1 AG083764), and
National Cancer Institute (R35 CA253185).
Fenglei Wang is supported by the American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellowship (Grant 897161).
Ping!....................
As much as I would like to be rid of diabetes, I'd like to try dietary changes and probiotics first.
Seems to me they could package a whole set of microbes in a capsule for people to take for a month until their gut flora becomes normalized..................
Gut biomes FOLLOW what we eat. They are like a mirror reflecting our diet. Not a cause but a result.
That’s what Probiotics are.
Your biggest risk factor... Your genes. Diabetes is largely an inherited disease.
I myself am not obese, never have been, wasn’t much of sugar eater, never used butter or margarine... My highest weight was 150, and I’m 5’-5”. When I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes I was 60 and weighed about 130... Now I’m at about 120 to 125. My father had type 2 and wasn’t fat, my brother had type 1 and wasn’t diagnosed until he was 26... 2 sisters and neither have diabetes... Mother didn’t have it either. My DNA test said that I’m prone to it... Apparently, they nailed it.
I’ve done the entire family history and there are at least a couple of instances of children’s deaths being attributed to starvation, or wasting disease in the late 19th and early 20th century. There wasn’t any starvation going on, so they likely died from type 1 diabetes.
So if you have family that has diabetes then be prepared... If you don’t, you’re likely off the hook.
It’s both, actually.
You get more of what you feed, yes.
But bacteria also send cravings for food they want.
It’s a vicious cycle. One that must be interrupted both by diet and good probiotics.
Utter idiocy. Research $$ better spent elsewhere.
They’ve learned NOTHING about the gut from this work and deviated from T2 as well.
I’ve become an avid consumer of yogurt products for this reason, mostly Kefir. I use it to make chia pudding.
I’d like to try dietary changes and probiotics first.
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Don’t get me wrong. I am a cynical basterd so my first reaction is to scoff at everything. I actually like that medical research is now studying gut flora and it’s effects on health. This stuff has been talked about for many decades by people outside the mainstream medical but dismissed by them. Dont’ forget the prime motivation for medical research, and that is for it to lead to prescriptions or procedures (profits).
However, I skimmed this article and I am still left thinking that they could easily be ascribing causality where it’s not warranted. If one changes their diet, it will change their gut biome in response. The change in gut biome may not be the cause of the incidence or intensity of type 2 diabetes, both biome and t2d could be the effect of change in diet. In other words, if you consume less sugar over a long enough time, the lack of insulin spike as well as the lack of sugar in the digestive tract lead to the two results that they casting as causal of each other.
Special bacteria in a capsule that is commonly used by Doctors to replace good bacteria that strong Antibiotic kill off. The antibiotics will kill both good and bad bacteria in your stomach and intestines. After taking the antibiotic, taking a Probiotic speeds the replacement of good bacteria.
Our local drug store keeps the Probioteic’s in the drugstore’s refrigerator.
I keep them in my refrigerator, my wife is a diabetic. My first wife was a diabetic. (she died in 2018)
Well...I think I changed my “gut biome” in 24 hours. After 18 months of daily diarrhea, was tired of no solutions. So hub&I did research...and found suggestions...within 24 hours of no veggies, no fruit, few carbs...diarrhea stopped. So, I am doing Carnivore basically to reset my gut biome for 4 months.
The study doesn’t point to anything that can be potentially done to help. They through out a few remote ideas, but they don’t know what’s going on with why this bacteria is higher or what is happening with the bacteriophage.
I just did some checking and it looks like Lactobacillus go down when Prevotella copri go up in population. Prevotella copri seem to like heme iron, which we get from mostly red meat, in quantity.
The study doesn’t point to much, but it is interesting.
Overlooked confounders: The study controlled for some factors like geography and ethnicity, but did not address other potentially influential variables like diet, lifestyle, medication use, or underlying health conditions.
That’s the sort of thing to identify and try.
I would suggest getting a fecal bacterial test done, which will tell you the general makeup of your gut bacteria and some other insights. You can order it yourself from Direct Labs. You send in the sample via FedEx.
Do note you could permanently lose some good bacteria, with an exclusive approach, like this.
I KNEW IT!!!
I’m fat because of viruses, not the 7000 calories a day.
I think maybe 7000 calories a day effected gut biome....but hey, that wont get you more research grant money.
Thx...will do.
What seems to be best is to be aware of the general balance these bacterial families provide. Some good bacteria can become bad, and vice-versa, depending on our diet and the other remaining bacteria still in our gut.
You can generally help more beneficial bacteria to grow, minimizing, but not eliminating, some bad ones, by having more soluble fiber. For some bacteria, milk products are helpful. For others, they can survive on multiple inputs, like fiber and milk and meat, for instance. There are many hundreds of different bacteria families in out gut, so we really don't know what could be most optimal.
For you, you found your body is not having problems with a meat-only diet. Maybe a yeast was the problem, as they would tend to require carbs, or a byproduct of protein breakdown that was a carb, prior to intestinal absorption. Greatly reducing types of food sources can help identify what might be encouraging the bad, but going exclusive for long may permanently change other things you didn't want changed.
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