Gastroenterology

Gastroenterology

Volume 146, Issue 6, May 2014, Pages 1564-1572
Gastroenterology

Modification of the Gut Microbiome to Maintain Health or Treat Disease
Diet and the Intestinal Microbiome: Associations, Functions, and Implications for Health and Disease

https://doi.org/10.1053/j.gastro.2014.01.058Get rights and content

The mutual relationship between the intestinal microbiota and its mammalian host is influenced by diet. Consumption of various nutrients affects the structure of the microbial community and provides substrates for microbial metabolism. The microbiota can produce small molecules that are absorbed by the host and affect many important physiological processes. Age-dependent and societal differences in the intestinal microbiota could result from differences in diet. Examples include differences in the intestinal microbiota of breastfed vs formula-fed infants or differences in microbial richness in people who consume an agrarian plant-based vs a Western diet, which is high in meat and fat. We review how diet affects the structure and metabolome of the human intestinal microbiome and may contribute to health or the pathogenesis of disorders such as coronary vascular disease and inflammatory bowel disease.

Section snippets

Diet Helps Shape the Composition of the Intestinal Microbiota

The coevolution of humans and our intestinal microbiota has led to our interdependent, mutualistic relationship. Food sources have guided the evolution of Homo sapiens. A comparison of the intestinal microbiota between different primates and mammals found that humans clustered more closely with other primates than nonprimates. Interestingly, diet was the most important determinant when human microbiota samples were most similar to samples from omnivorous primate species.28 The variety of foods

Effects of Diet on the Microbial Metabolome

Although diet affects the composition and/or richness of the intestinal microbiota, perhaps more important are its effects on the microbial metabolome. Diet can alter the functional metabolism of the intestinal microbiome at a genomic level. For example, studies in Japanese populations have shown that after consumption of seaweeds, genes that encode enzymes that metabolize marine red algae are transferred from marine-associated bacteria to specific bacterial taxa in the intestinal microbiome.52

Future Directions

There is a large amount of data indicating the importance of diet in establishing the composition and metabolome of the human intestinal microbiome. Functional studies in animal models, together with descriptive association studies in humans, provide evidence for the role of diet in disease pathogenesis through its effects on intestinal microbes. The dietary factors that predominate are age dependent; breast milk vs infant formula are determinants in early life, whereas agrarian vs Western

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    Conflicts of interest The authors disclose no conflicts.

    Funding Supported by National Institutes of Health grants UH2/3 DK083981, R01 DK089472, and R01 GM103591 (to G.D.W.) and a NASPGHAN Foundation Fellow to Faculty Transition Award (to L.G.A.).

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