Gut Microbiota Interacts With Brain Microstructure and Function
Context: Evidence from animals suggests that gut microbiota affects brain structure and function but evidence in humans is scarce. Objective: This study sought to evaluate potential interactions among gut microbiota composition, brain microstructure, and cognitive tests in obese and nonobese subject...
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Published in | The journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism Vol. 100; no. 12; pp. 4505 - 4513 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
United States
Endocrine Society
01.12.2015
Copyright by The Endocrine Society |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Context:
Evidence from animals suggests that gut microbiota affects brain structure and function but evidence in humans is scarce.
Objective:
This study sought to evaluate potential interactions among gut microbiota composition, brain microstructure, and cognitive tests in obese and nonobese subjects.
Design, Setting, and Participants:
This was a cross-sectional study at a tertiary hospital including 20 consecutive obese and 19 nonobese subjects similar in age and sex.
Main Outcome Measures:
Gut microbiota (16S bacterial gene pyrosequencing), brain microstructure (diffusion tensor imaging of brain white and gray matter and R2* sequences in magnetic resonance imaging) and cognitive tests.
Results:
Hierarchical clustering revealed a specific gut microbiota–brain map profile for obese individuals who could be discriminated from nonobese subjects (accuracy of 0.81). Strikingly, Shannon index was linked to R2* and fractional anisotropy of the hypothalamus, caudate nucleus, and hippocampus, suggesting sparing of these brain structures with increased bacterial biodiversity. Microbiota profile also clustered with cognitive function. The relative abundance of Actinobacteria phylum was linked not only to magnetic resonance imaging diffusion tensor imaging variables in the thalamus, hypothalamus, and amygdala but also to cognitive test scores related to speed, attention, and cognitive flexibility.
Conclusions:
In sum, obesity status affects microbiota–brain microstructure and function crosstalk. |
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Bibliography: | This study was supported by European Project FLORINASH-FP7-HEALTH-2009-2.4.5-1 and by ISCIII (PI 11/00701 and PI 14/111). CIBERobn is an initiative of ISCIII. ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 0021-972X 1945-7197 |
DOI: | 10.1210/jc.2015-3076 |