Bifidobacteria or fiber protect against diet-induced microbiota-mediated colonic mucus deterioration

By Bjoern O. Schroeder, G. Birchenough, M. Ståhlman, Liisa Arike, M. Johansson, G. Hansson, F. Bäckhed. Cell Host and Microbe, 2017

603 citations recorded by the source corpus.

SUMMARY Diet strongly affects gut microbiota composition and gut bacteria can influence the colonic mucus layer, a physical barrier that separates trillions of gut bacteria from the host. However, the interplay between a Western style diet (WSD), gut microbiota composition and the intestinal mucus layer is less clear. Here we show that mice fed a WSD have an altered colonic microbiota composition that causes increased penetrability and a reduced growth rate of the inner mucus layer. Both barrier defects can be prevented by transplanting microbiota from chow-fed mice. In addition, we found that administration of Bifidobacterium longum was sufficient to restore mucus growth whereas administration of the fiber inulin prevented increased mucus penetrability in WSD-fed mice. We hypothesize that the presence of distinct bacteria is crucial for proper mucus function. If confirmed in humans, these findings may help to better understand diseases with an affected mucus layer, such as ulcerative colitis.

Subfields: Gastroenterology, Molecular Biology, Surgery

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5dae3a36db336a07115978df76679ccba9d9263a

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In Molecular Biology

1. Nihal Hasan
2. J. Durack
3. S. Lynch
4. Hongyi Yang

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Citations in the corpus

• The gut microbiome: Relationships with disease and opportunities for therapy (2018, background): “Conversely, an abundance of a mucin-degrading gut bacteria, Akkermansia muciniphila, is associated with increased metabolic health in obese patients (Dao et al., 2016) and in mice fed a HFD (Schneeberger et al., 2015).”
• Probiotic Species in the Modulation of Gut Microbiota: An Overview (2018, neutral): “longum) preventedmucus production [65].”
• Factors affecting the composition of the gut microbiota, and its modulation (2019, background): “Studies showed that administration of inulin can prevent the harmful effects of high fat diets on penetrability of the mucus layer and metabolic functions (Zhou, 2017; Schroeder et al., 2018).”