GI Bacteria Diversity Integral to Health

Submitting that:  “We are facing a global metabolic health crisis provoked by an obesity epidemic,” Oluf Pedersen, from the University of Copenhagen (Denmark), and colleagues conducted DNA analysis on intestinal bacteria from 292 Danish patients, 169 of whom were obese and 123 who were not.  The researchers found that among the obese subjects, 23% had low “bacterial richness,” with an average of 380,000 microbial genes, compared with an average of 640,000 genes in those who had more diverse microbiomes.  Subjects with less diverse gut bacteria also had greater adiposity, insulin resistance, and dyslipidemia and a more pronounced inflammatory phenotype than those with high bacterial richness.  Those subjects also gained significantly more weight over the previous 9 years.  The study authors submit that these correlations help to “identify subsets of individuals in the general white adult population who may be at increased risk of progressing to adiposity-associated co-morbidities.”