Intestinal microbiology shapes population health impacts of diet and lifestyle risk exposures in Torres Strait Islander communities.

Fredrick M Mobegi,Fintan Thompson,Robyn Mcdermott,Steve L Wesselingh,Linton R Harriss,Sean M Taylor,Geraint B Rogers,Lex Ex Leong,Steven L Taylor,Kerry L Ivey,Jocelyn M Choo

doi:10.7554/elife.58407

Abstract

Poor diet and lifestyle exposures are implicated in substantial global increases in non-communicable disease burden in low-income, remote, and Indigenous communities. This observational study investigated the contribution of the fecal microbiome to influence host physiology in two Indigenous communities in the Torres Strait Islands: Mer, a remote island where a traditional diet predominates, and Waiben a more accessible island with greater access to takeaway food and alcohol. Counterintuitively, disease markers were more pronounced in Mer residents. However, island-specific differences in disease risk were explained, in part, by microbiome traits. The absence of Alistipes onderdonkii, for example, significantly (p=0.014) moderated island-specific patterns of systolic blood pressure in multivariate-adjusted models. We also report mediatory relationships between traits of the fecal metagenome, disease markers, and risk exposures. Understanding how intestinal microbiome traits influence response to disease risk exposures is critical for the development of strategies that mitigate the growing burden of cardiometabolic disease in these communities.

Highlights

Changes in dietary and lifestyle risk exposures are implicated in substantial global increases in the non-communicable disease burden (World Health Organization, 2014)
To investigate the role of the intestinal microbiome in defining the health impacts associated with changing risk exposures, we focused on two Indigenous communities in the Torres Strait Islands, an archipelago that lies between Australia’s Cape York Peninsula and Papua New Guinea
We report the intestinal microbiome to modulate cardiometabolic risk in two Torres Strait Islander populations

Summary

Introduction

Changes in dietary and lifestyle risk exposures are implicated in substantial global increases in the non-communicable disease burden (World Health Organization, 2014). Indigenous counterparts (Zhao et al, 2008; Hodge et al, 2010), with high prevalence in very remote communities (Arnold et al, 2016; Azzopardi et al, 2018) This disparity in disease burden contributes substantially to health inequality (Anderson et al, 2016) and is replicated in remote Indigenous populations across the world (Sonnenburg and Backhed, 2016)

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Results

Conclusion