Researchers from Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health and Center for Excellence in Molecular Cell Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences revealed the important role of diet-induced changes of gut microbiota on dyslipidemia. 

In recent years, gut microbiota, known as a “super organ” of the human body, has been shown to play important roles in development and alleviation of obesity and related cardiometabolic diseases in human and animal studies. However, evidences from intervention trials are still limited, especially in Chinese. Thus, current study aimed to explore whether dietary interventions can affect structure and function of gut microbiota and how changed gut microbiota influences blood lipid profile. 

Previously, in a 12-week feeding intervention trial, LIN Xu’ group found that both non-calorie-restricted low-carbohydrate (LC) diet and a traditional high-carbohydrate diet with 35% energy reduction comparably reduced bodyweight, but only LC diet showed additional benefits on blood lipid profile in overweight/obese Chinese women. Based on the samples and data of this trial, research teams of LI Yixue, LIN Xu and ZENG Rong made collaborative efforts to further measure the changes of metagenomics and targeted-metabolomics by using the samples collected in baseline and 12-week after intervention.  

MA Yiwei, SUN Yidi, and SUN Liang discovered for the first time, that different weight-loss diets caused different changes in structure and function of gut microbiota, as well as participant’s blood levels of fatty acids and acylcarnitines. After stepwise regression analysis, the changes in a series of co-abundance gene clusters (CAG) of gut microbiota, as well as blood fatty acids and acylcarnitines, were found to be significantly associated with improved blood high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) and triglycerides. Noteworthily, changes in CAGs showed greater contributions to elevated HDL levels and reduced triglycerides levels than changes in fatty acids and acylcarnitines. 

Overall, the current study provides novel evidence to uncover that different diet-induced changes of gut microbiota might exert greater impact than altered host metabolism on improved dyslipidemia, supporting the important role of the complex “diet-microbiota-host” interactions on cardiometabolic health. 

This work entitled “Effects of gut microbiota and fatty acid metabolism on dyslipidemia following weight-loss diets in women: Results from a randomized controlled trial” was published online in Clinical Nutrition on September 23, 2021. 

This research was funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Shanghai Science and Technology Commission.  

Contribution rate of baseline clinical parameters, fatty acids, acylcarnitines, CAGs, and their combination to blood lipid improvements. (Image provided by LIN Xu’s group)  

Media Contact: 
WANG Jin (Ms.) 
Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health,
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Email: sibssc@sibs.ac.cn
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