Few organisms in the gut flora are known to play an important role in type 2 diabetes

Researchers at Oregon State University have found that several organisms in the gut flora play an important role in type 2 diabetes, a serious metabolic disease that affects about 1 in 10 Americans. We have discovered that it opens up the possibilities of tics treatment.

Type 2 diabetes is actually a global epidemic, and the number of diagnoses is expected to continue to increase over the next decade. One of the main factors is the so-called “Western diet”, which is rich in saturated fat and refined sugar. However, gut bacteria play an important role in regulating the effects of the diet. “

Andrey Morgun, Collaborative Research Leader, Associate Professor, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, OSU

Formerly known as adult-onset diabetes, type 2 Diabetes is a chronic disease It affects how the body metabolizes glucose. Glucose is an important source of energy. For some patients, it means that their body resists the effects of insulin-insulin-a hormone produced by the pancreas that opens the door where sugar enters cells. Other patients do not produce enough insulin to maintain normal blood sugar levels.

In either case, sugar accumulates in the bloodstream and, if left untreated, can damage many major organs, sometimes to the point of disability or even life-threatening. The main risk factors for type 2 diabetes are Overweight, Often the result of a Western diet combined with low physical activity.

The human gut flora is characterized by over 10 trillion microbial cells from approximately 1,000 different bacterial species. Microbiome dysbiosis, or imbalance, is generally associated with harmful effects on human health.

“Some studies suggest that dysbiosis is caused by complex changes resulting from the interaction of hundreds of different microorganisms,” said OSU’s Associate Professor of Biomedical Sciences at Carlson Veterinary Medicine. Other co-leaders, Natalia Shurgenko, said. “But our and other studies suggest that individual members of diet-altered microbial communities can have a significant impact on the host.”

Shulzhenko and Morgun used a new data-driven systems biology approach called trans-kingdom network analysis to study host-microbial interactions in the Western diet. This allowed individual members of the microbiome to investigate whether diet was involved in host-induced metabolic changes.

“The analysis pointed to certain microbes that could affect the way people metabolize glucose and lipids,” Morgan said. “More importantly, we were able to speculate whether these effects were harmful or beneficial to the host, and found that there was a link between these microorganisms and obesity. I did. “

Scientists have identified four operational classification units (OTUs) that appear to affect glucose metabolism. OTU is a means of classifying bacteria based on gene sequence similarity.

The identified OTUs corresponded to four bacterial species: Lactobacillus johnsonii, Lactobacillus gasseri, Romboutsia ilealis, and Ruminococcus gnavus.

“The first two microbes are considered potential” improvers “of glucose metabolism and the other two potential” worse “,” said Shulzhenko. “The overall sign is not community-level dysbiosis, but individual types of microorganisms and / or their interactions are the major players in type 2 diabetes.”

Researchers fed mice on a diet equivalent to the Western diet and supplemented rodent intake with improving and deteriorating microbes. Lactobacillus promoted the health of mitochondria in the liver and improved the way the host metabolizes glucose and lipids. In addition, the mice that ingested these lactic acid rods had a lower fat mass index than the mice that ingested only the Western diet.

Checking mouse results against data from previous human studies, scientists found a correlation between the human body mass index and the abundance of four bacteria-more. Improved people meant a better body mass index, and more worse people were associated with less healthy BMI.

“We have found that R. ilealis is present in more than 80% of obese patients, suggesting that this organism may be the pathogen that is prevalent in overweight people,” Shulzhenko said. ..

Pasobionto is an organism that normally has a symbiotic relationship with its host, but can cause illness under certain circumstances.

“Overall, our observations corroborate what we saw in mice fed a Western diet,” she said. “And when we examined all the metabolites, we found some metabolites that accounted for most of the probiotic effects caused by lactobacillus treatment.”

Lactobacillus is a genus of microorganisms containing hundreds of different bacterial strains. Its representative is common among probiotics and is often found in many types of fermented foods and lactobacillus-enriched dairy products such as yogurt.

“Our study reveals insights into potential probiotic strains for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and obesity and the mechanisms of their action,” Morgun said. “This generally means an opportunity to develop targeted therapies rather than trying to restore a” healthy “microbiome. “