Dataset Information

Microbiome and Blood Analyte Differences Point to Community and Metabolic Signatures in Lean and Obese Horses.

ABSTRACT: Due to modern management practices and the availability of energy dense feeds, obesity is a serious and increasingly common health problem for horses. Equine obesity is linked to insulin resistance and exacerbation of inflammatory issues such as osteoarthritis and laminitis. While the gut microbiome is thought to play a part in metabolic status in horses, bacterial communities associated with obesity have yet to be described. Here we report differences in metabolic factors in the blood of obese, normal and lean horses correlated with differences in gut microbiome composition. We report that obese horses had higher levels of leptin, triglycerides, glucose, and cortisol in their blood, and more diverse gut microbiome communities with higher relative abundance of Firmicutes, and lower numbers of Bacteroidetes and Actinobacteria. Network analyses of correlations between body condition, blood analytes, and microbial composition at the genus level revealed a more nuanced picture of microbe-host interactions, pointing to specific bacterial species and assemblages that may be signatures of obesity and leanness in the horse gut. In particular, bacteria groups positively associated with two blood analytes and obesity included Butyrivibrio spp., Prevotellaceae, Blautia spp., two members of Erysipelotrichaceae, and a Lachnospiraceae taxa. These results are an important first step in unraveling the metabolic differences between obese and lean horse gut communities, and designing targeted strategies for microbial intervention.

SUBMITTER: Biddle AS

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6158370 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Microbiome and Blood Analyte Differences Point to Community and Metabolic Signatures in Lean and Obese Horses.

Biddle Amy S AS Tomb Jean-Francois JF Fan Zirui Z

Frontiers in veterinary science 20180920

Due to modern management practices and the availability of energy dense feeds, obesity is a serious and increasingly common health problem for horses. Equine obesity is linked to insulin resistance and exacerbation of inflammatory issues such as osteoarthritis and laminitis. While the gut microbiome is thought to play a part in metabolic status in horses, bacterial communities associated with obesity have yet to be described. Here we report differences in metabolic factors in the blood of obese, ...[more]

PMID: 30294603

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Project description:Background & aimsDysbiosis of the gut microbiota in response to an energy-rich Western diet and the potential leak of bacteria and/or bacterial products from the intestine to the liver is perceived as a potential risk factor for the development of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). We investigated the microbiome in liver biopsies from healthy lean and obese individuals and compared it with their blood microbiome.MethodsWe examined liver biopsies from 15 healthy lean and 14 obese individuals (BMI of 18.5-25 and 30-40 kg/m2, respectively). Bacterial 16S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) was analysed by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and 16S metagenomic sequencing targeting the hypervariable V3-V4 region. Metagenomic analysis was performed using the linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) algorithm. Data are medians with IQRs in brackets.ResultsHistology revealed hepatic steatosis in 13 obese individuals and in 2 lean individuals. A robust signal from qPCR revealed significantly higher amounts of bacterial rDNA copies in liver samples from obese individuals compared with those from lean individuals (148 [118-167] vs. 77 [62-122] 16S copies/ng DNA, p <0.001). Liver biopsies from the obese group were characterised by lower alpha diversity at the phylum level (Shannon index 0.60 [0.55-0.76] vs. 0.73 [0.62-0.90], p = 0.025), and metagenomic profiling revealed a significantly higher proportion of Proteobacteria in this group (81.0% [73.0-82.4%] vs. 74.3% [68.4-78.4%], p = 0.014).ConclusionsWe provide evidence for the presence of bacterial rDNA in the healthy human liver. Based on differences in the hepatic microbiome between obese individuals and healthy lean individuals, we suggest that changes in the liver microbiome could constitute an additional risk factor for the development of NAFLD.Lay summaryNon-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has become the most common liver disease globally, and new evidence suggests that obesity is associated with a disturbed gut bacterial composition, which may influence the development of NAFLD. We examined the composition of bacterial DNA in liver biopsies from healthy lean and obese individuals and found a different composition of bacterial DNA in liver biopsies from the obese group. We propose that the increased bacterial DNA load in the livers of obese individuals could constitute an early risk factor for the progression of NAFLD.Clinical trial numberNCT02337660.

Project description:The human distal gut harbours a vast ensemble of microbes (the microbiota) that provide important metabolic capabilities, including the ability to extract energy from otherwise indigestible dietary polysaccharides. Studies of a few unrelated, healthy adults have revealed substantial diversity in their gut communities, as measured by sequencing 16S rRNA genes, yet how this diversity relates to function and to the rest of the genes in the collective genomes of the microbiota (the gut microbiome) remains obscure. Studies of lean and obese mice suggest that the gut microbiota affects energy balance by influencing the efficiency of calorie harvest from the diet, and how this harvested energy is used and stored. Here we characterize the faecal microbial communities of adult female monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs concordant for leanness or obesity, and their mothers, to address how host genotype, environmental exposure and host adiposity influence the gut microbiome. Analysis of 154 individuals yielded 9,920 near full-length and 1,937,461 partial bacterial 16S rRNA sequences, plus 2.14 gigabases from their microbiomes. The results reveal that the human gut microbiome is shared among family members, but that each person's gut microbial community varies in the specific bacterial lineages present, with a comparable degree of co-variation between adult monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs. However, there was a wide array of shared microbial genes among sampled individuals, comprising an extensive, identifiable 'core microbiome' at the gene, rather than at the organismal lineage, level. Obesity is associated with phylum-level changes in the microbiota, reduced bacterial diversity and altered representation of bacterial genes and metabolic pathways. These results demonstrate that a diversity of organismal assemblages can nonetheless yield a core microbiome at a functional level, and that deviations from this core are associated with different physiological states (obese compared with lean).

Dataset Information

Microbiome and Blood Analyte Differences Point to Community and Metabolic Signatures in Lean and Obese Horses.

Publications

Microbiome and Blood Analyte Differences Point to Community and Metabolic Signatures in Lean and Obese Horses.

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