Monitoring Bacterial Community of Human Gut Microbiota Reveals an Increase in Lactobacillus in Obese Patients and Methanogens in Anorexic Patients

By Fabrice Armougom, M. Henry, B. Vialettes, D. Raccah, Didier Raoult. PLoS ONE, 2009

850 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Background Studies of the bacterial communities of the gut microbiota have revealed a shift in the ratio of Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes in obese patients. Determining the variations of microbial communities in feces may be beneficial for the identification of specific profiles in patients with abnormal weights. The roles of the archaeon Methanobrevibacter smithii and Lactobacillus species have not been described in these studies. Methods and Findings We developed an efficient and robust real-time PCR tool that includes a plasmid-based internal control and allows for quantification of the bacterial divisions Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, and Lactobacillus as well as the methanogen M. smithii. We applied this technique to the feces of 20 obese subjects, 9 patients with anorexia nervosa, and 20 normal-weight healthy controls. Our results confirmed a reduction in the Bacteroidetes community in obese patients (p<0.01). We found a significantly higher Lactobacillus species concentration in obese patients than in lean controls (p = 0.0197) or anorexic patients (p = 0.0332). The M. smithii concentration was much higher in anorexic patients than in the lean population (p = 0.0171). Conclusions Lactobacillus species are widely used as growth promoters in the farm industry and are now linked to obesity in humans. The study of the bacterial flora in anorexic patients revealed an increase in M. smithii. This increase might represent an adaptive use of nutrients in this population.

Subfields: Food Science, Infectious Diseases, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/865378f3977cd19f1b94e94d98cd67bd8b48ff12

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Citations in the corpus

Role of Lactobacillus reuteri in Human Health and Diseases (2018, background): “The microbiota composition varies between lean and obese individuals, and a surprisingly high level of Lactobacillus spp. has been found in the microbiota of both obese adults and obese children (Armougom et al., 2009; Bervoets et al., 2013).”
Effects of Gut Microbes on Nutrient Absorption and Energy Regulation (2012, result): “In contrast, when a group of anorexic individuals was compared with lean and obese individuals, the abundance of Firmicutes did not correlate with obesity.(41) These phylogenetic differences may arise from many variables, including diet, sample handling, sequencing techniques, and data analysis tool”
High-fat diet alters gut microbiota physiology in mice (2013, background): “Lactic acid bacteria have been proposed to be key players in host metabolic balance (Armougom et al., 2009; Delzenne and Reid, 2009; Arora et al., 2012).”
Impacts of Gut Bacteria on Human Health and Diseases (2015, background): “The ratio of Firmicutes to Bacteroides has been found to be correlated to body weight, with the ratio being higher in obese people [68].”
Toward defining the autoimmune microbiome for type 1 diabetes (2011, background): “Among Firmicutes, Lactobacillus numbers seem to increase in obese patients (Turnbaugh et al., 2006; Armougom et al., 2009).”
Gut microbiota in children with type 1 diabetes differs from that in healthy children: a case-control study (2013, background): “The opposite happens in obesity, where the imbalance is due to the increase in the Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes ratio [47], indicating that obesity and diabetes are associated with different groups of intestinal microbiota.”
Metal Oxide Nanoparticles Induce Minimal Phenotypic Changes in a Model Colon Gut Microbiota (2015, neutral): “Understanding the gut microbiome and its importance to human health with techniques such as molecular methods (Collins and Gibson, 1999; Matsuki et al., 2004; Eckburg et al., 2005; Armougom et al., 2009) will give rise to more treatment and disease prevention options.”
The human gut microbiota: Metabolism and perspective in obesity (2018, background): “Obese individuals seem to have fewer Bacteroidetes counts than normal weight individuals.(79,82,83) On the other hand, two studies associated the Bacteroidetes phylum with weight gain in pregnant women.”
Human genetics shape the gut microbiome. (2014, neutral): “smithii has been associated with a lean phenotype inmultiple studies (Million et al., 2012, 2013;Schwiertz et al., 2010; Armougom et al., 2009; Le Chatelier et al., 2013), raising the possibility that methanogens are key components of the consortium for regulating host phenotype.”
Gut microbiome, obesity, and metabolic dysfunction. (2011, background): “Whereas a few studies have observed an increase in the Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratio (29, 31, 32),”
The Impact of the Gut Microbiota on Human Health: An Integrative View (2012, neutral): “…Methanobrevibacter smithii [ Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, and Lactobacillus similar to lean patients, though M. smithii significantly increased Armougom et al., 2009; Pflughoeft and Versalovic, 2011 IBD—Crohn's Disease Bacteroides ovatus [ less diversity in patients with Crohn's disease…”
Geography, Ethnicity or Subsistence-Specific Variations in Human Microbiome Composition and Diversity (2017, background): “GM dysbiosis is associated with numerous metabolic and inflammatory disorders like obesity, diabetes, allergy etc. (Adlerberth and Wold, 2009; Armougom et al., 2009; Anderson et al., 2011; Clemente et al., 2012).”