María Escartin, María Corominas Prados, Andrea Esteban Bartual, Lucas Cibeira Gallardo and Andrea Telich Zúñiga
August 29th 2018
Nowadays, the non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is one of the most common causes of chronic liver disease in obese women, affecting around 30% of the world’s population. It was recently found that a gut microbiome signature derived from a metagenomic and phenomic data can now accurately predict this disease. For the past 10 years, researches report evidences of a possible relationship between the gut microbiome, the NAFLD, the insulin resistance (IR) and type 2 diabetes (TD2).
This suggests that the gut microbiota and the liver are important factors in the development of NAFLD, including its subtype nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), which consists of fat accumulations in the liver. There are several ways of manipulating this gut microbiota, like using probiotics, prebiotics, antibiotics, among others. For NAFLD it has been trialed the usage of around 20 probiotics and mixtures to see the effect that they have. For example, it was discoveredthat 4-month supplement of VSL#3 can make a significant good difference in liver function and increased glucagon-like peptide levels (Maet al.,2017) Leaving an endless opportunity path for scientists to keep working on this investigation in order to have more alternatives.
Previously, NAFLD has been associated with a bigger proportion of Gram-negative bacterial species in the gut. In words of the research authors, “the microbial populations of patients with NASH have been suggested to increase the ability to produce ethanol and some members of gut microbiota can convert choline to trimethylamine, both of which can induce liver injury leading to hepatic steatosis and steatohepatitis” (Caussy, 2018). For this reason, disruption in gut barrier leads to leaky gut which may result in metabolic endotoxemia, increased lipogenesis leading to NASH.
On the other hand, obesity is subdivided into metabolically healthy and metabolically unhealthy. Data suggest that gut-microbiome-derived metabolites play a role in regulating the switch between these two obesities, due to the phenotype discovered in the presence of co-existing hepatic steatosis among patients who are obese. These due to the fact that gut microbiota plays a critical role in the development of obesity by producing microbial metabolites similar to a short-chain of fatty acids (SCFAs) that can regulate host energy harvest.
Keywords: #microbiome #obesity #metabolism #microbiology
Caussy, C., Loomba, R. (2018). Gut microbiome, microbial metabolites and the development of NAFLD. Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41575-018-0058-x. Last visit: September 25th 2018.
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