Abstract
Epidemiological studies suggest a positive association between obesity and fecal short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) produced by microbial fermentation of dietary carbohydrates, while animal models suggest increased energy harvest through colonic SCFA production in obesity. However, there is a lack of human population-based studies with dietary intake data, plasma SCFAs, gut microbial, and anthropometric data. In 490 Chinese adults aged 30–68 years, we examined the associations between key plasma SCFAs (butyrate/isobutyrate, isovalerate, and valerate measured by non-targeted plasma metabolomics) with body mass index (BMI) using multivariable-adjusted linear regression. We then assessed whether overweight (BMI ≥ 24 kg/m2) modified the association between dietary-precursors of SCFAs (insoluble fiber, total carbohydrates, and high-fiber foods) with plasma SCFAs. In a sub-sample (n = 209) with gut metagenome data, we examined the association between gut microbial SCFA-producers with BMI. We found positive associations between butyrate/isobutyrate and BMI (p-value < 0.05). The associations between insoluble fiber and butyrate/isobutyrate differed by overweight (p-value < 0.10). There was no statistical evidence for an association between microbial SCFA-producers and BMI. In sum, plasma SCFAs were positively associated with BMI and that the colonic fermentation of fiber may differ for adults with versus without overweight.
Highlights
Overall and central obesity are major risk factors for a wide range of chronic diseases, including cardiometabolic diseases [1,2,3]
We first examined the associations between plasma short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) and body mass index (BMI) and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) and found that butyrate/isobutyrate was positively associated with BMI (p-value = 0.04) and WHtR (p-value = 0.003), and isovalerate (p-value = 0.04) and total SCFAs (p-value = 0.03) were positively associated with WHtR
We found no association between the total relative abundance (p-value > 0.05) of microbial SCFA producers with plasma SCFAs, a few specific species were associated with butyrate/isobutyrate, valerate, isovalerate, and/or total plasma SCFAs (Table S9) at p-value < 0.05, including Faecalibacterium prausnitzii
Summary
Overall and central obesity are major risk factors for a wide range of chronic diseases, including cardiometabolic diseases [1,2,3]. Recent evidence has shown that the gut microbiota and microbiota-mediated metabolites like short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) influence diet-induced obesity [4,5]. SCFAs like butyrate are major products of microbiota fermentation of dietary carbohydrates, especially soluble fiber and resistant starch [4]. Fiber-rich diets and Mediterranean diets have been shown to be positively associated with weight loss [6,7] and increased serum [8] and fecal SCFAs [9], respectively. Studies have yielded incongruent results for the SCFA-obesity association, which involves various factors like diet and gut microbiota. Whereas several studies have demonstrated that dietary SCFA supplementation may be beneficial to weight loss through appetite regulation [10,11]
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