What it is
Diet shapes the composition of the gut microbiota, but the specific effects of distinct food groups on microbiome dynamics are unclear, particularly under extreme perturbation. The authors precisely tracked 9,419 meals eaten by 173 patients in hospital for haematopoietic cell transplantation (a transplant of blood-forming cells) and analyzed the microbiome changes that followed. Bayesian inference on data from 158 patients with paired microbiome samples taken over time showed that eating sweets and sugars during antibiotic exposure predicted worse microbial dysbiosis (disruption of the gut's microbial community): lower α-diversity (the variety of microbes in a sample) and a greater expansion of Enterococcus, a pathobiont (a resident bacterium that can cause disease).
Why it matters
The study ties one food group, sweets and sugars, to how badly antibiotics disrupt the gut microbiome in a setting of extreme perturbation, and experiments in mice point the same way: sucrose supplementation increased and prolonged the expansion of Enterococcus that antibiotics induce. The authors suggest that avoiding a diet rich in simple sugars during antibiotic treatment may mitigate microbiota disruption.
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Filed underGut microbiota and health, Clostridium difficile and Clostridium perfringens research, Probiotics and Fermented Foods
