Bacterial communities and metabolic activity of faecal cultures from equol producer and non-producer menopausal women under treatment with soy isoflavones

Lucía Guadamuro,Baltasar Mayo,Christoph C Tebbe,Susana Delgado,Anja B Dohrmann

doi:10.1186/s12866-017-1001-y

Abstract

BackgroundIsoflavones are polyphenols with estrogenic activity found mainly in soy and soy-derived products that need to be metabolised in the intestine by the gut bacteria to be fully active. There is little knowledge about isoflavone bioconversion and equol production in the human intestine. In this work, we developed an in vitro anaerobic culture model based on faecal slurries to assess the impact of isoflavone supplementation on the overall intestinal bacterial composition changes and associated metabolic transformations.ResultsIn the faecal anaerobic batch cultures of this study bioconversion of isoflavones into equol was possible, suggesting the presence of viable equol-producing bacterial taxa within the faeces of menopausal women with an equol producer phenotype. The application of high-throughput DNA sequencing of 16S rRNA gene amplicons revealed the composition of the faecal cultures to be modified by the addition of isoflavones, with enrichment of some bacterial gut members associated with the metabolism of phenolics and/or equol production, such as Collinsella, Faecalibacterium and members of the Clostridium clusters IV and XIVa. In addition, the concentration of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) detected in the isoflavone-containing faecal cultures was higher in those inoculated with faecal slurries from equol-producing women.ConclusionsThis study constitutes the first step in the development of a faecal culturing system with isoflavones that would further allow the selection and isolation of intestinal bacterial types able to metabolize these compounds and produce equol in vitro. Although limited by the low number of faecal cultures analysed and the inter-individual bacterial diversity, the in vitro results obtained in this work tend to indicate that soy isoflavones might provide an alternative energy source for the increase of equol-producing taxa and enhancement of SCFAs production. SCFAs and equol are both considered pivotal bacterial metabolites in the triggering of intestinal health-related beneficial effects.

Highlights

Isoflavones are polyphenols with estrogenic activity found mainly in soy and soy-derived products that need to be metabolised in the intestine by the gut bacteria to be fully active
In the medium inoculated with S. equolifaciens DSM 24851, used as a positive control for equol production, daidzin levels were maintained while daidzein was transformed and converted to equol, reaching 2 μg/ml after 24 h incubation
In the primary faecal cultures from the three equol producers (WC, WG and WP) comparable amounts of equol to that produced by the positive control were recorded (1.40– 3.07 μg/ml)

Summary

Introduction

Isoflavones are polyphenols with estrogenic activity found mainly in soy and soy-derived products that need to be metabolised in the intestine by the gut bacteria to be fully active. There is a growing body of scientific evidence showing beneficial effects in counteracting symptoms such as hot flushes and vasomotor reactions in menopausal women [2], the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has recently refuted health claims about the role of isoflavones in body functions [3]. This may be so because the functionality of isoflavones depends on their bioavailability and their conversion into (more) active metabolites within the intestinal tract. Such differences in the bacterial community composition may, influence the fate of isoflavone metabolic transformations [7, 8], which could contribute to differences in the physiological response to isoflavone treatment

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