Obesity as a consequence of gut bacteria and diet interactions.

Katerina Kotzampassi,George Stavrou,Evangelos J Giamarellos-Bourboulis

doi:10.1155/2014/651895

Abstract

Obesity is a major public health concern, caused by a combination of increased consumption of energy-dense foods and reduced physical activity, with contributions from host genetics, environment, and adipose tissue inflammation. In recent years, the gut microbiome has also been found to be implicated and augmented research in mice and humans have attributed to it both the manifestation and/or exacerbation of this major epidemic and vice versa. At the experimental level, analysis of fecal samples revealed a potential link between obesity and alterations in the gut flora (drop in Bacteroidetes and increase in Firmicutes), the specific gut microbiome being associated with the obese phenotype. Conventionally raised mice were found to have over 40% more total body fat compared with those raised under germ-free conditions, while conventionalization of germ-free mice resulted in a significant increase in total body fat. Similarly, the sparse data in humans supports the fact that fat storage is favoured by the presence of the gut microbiota, through a multifaceted mechanism. Efforts to identify new therapeutic strategies to modulate gut microbiota would be of high priority for public health, and to date, probiotics and/or prebiotics seem to be the most effective tools.

Highlights

T Obesity is a major public health concern, threatening both the industrialized and the developing countries, largely in parallel to the adoption of a “modern”/Western-type lifestyle
It is becoming evident that Recent studies have suggested microbiota to be an environobesity and its causes are significantly more complex than mental factor involved in the control of body weight and previously thought, with contributions from host genetics, energy homeostasis
It is well documented that the human gut microbiota of all the above and leading to increased morbidity and, mostly Gram-positive and ISRN Obesity anaerobic [11], are unique to each individual, highly variable derived from other weight loss studies show marked and between persons, and remarkably stable after the first year of sustained changes in the microbial composition of the gut life [12, 13]

Summary

Introduction

T Obesity is a major public health concern, threatening both the industrialized and the developing countries, largely in parallel to the adoption of a “modern”/Western-type lifestyle. It is well documented that the human gut microbiota of all the above and leading to increased morbidity and (a total of up to 100 trillion cells), mostly Gram-positive and ISRN Obesity anaerobic [11], are unique to each individual, highly variable derived from other weight loss studies show marked and between persons, and remarkably stable after the first year of sustained changes in the microbial composition of the gut life [12, 13]. Comparable results have been found between the faecal microbiota of obese and lean twins: while a core gut microbiome exists in both subjects, obese individuals exhibit reduced diversity and an altered representation of metabolic pathways in their microbiota [39], in addition to the lower proportion of Bacteroidetes and the higher proportion of Actinobacteria associated with obesity [21]

What Is the Role of Food Intake?

Future Perspectives

Findings

Conflict of Interests