Project: Diet x gut microbiome-based metabotypes to determine cardio-metabolic risk and tailor intervention strategies for improved health

Acronym DiGuMet
Duration 01/01/2018 - 31/05/2022
Project Topic The human gut microbiota has been linked with incidence and progression of noncommunicable diseases and their risk factors. Moreover, diet has been identified as an important modulator of microbiota composition and function, but responses vary between individuals. Underlying mechanisms of diet x microbiota interactions remain to be elucidated to provide a foundation for tailored dietary strategies for personalized precision nutrition. The overall aim of DiGuMet is to explore how gut microbiota interacts with diet and the role of such interactions for disease risk factors in humans. Our aim is to dissect the underlying mechanisms through extensive molecular phenotyping using metagenomics and etabolomics combined with lifestyle data from an established cohort as well as a dietary intervention study. We hypothesize that: (i) gut microbiota x diet interactions are a major determinant of specific metabotypes that are linked with cardiometabolic disease risk; (ii) distinct etabotypes can be identified in free-living subjects based on comprehensive assessment of health-related status, traditional bloodbased biomarkers and multi-OMICs; and (iii) these etabotypes could be used as the basis for tailored dietary interventions to maximize health benefits for groups of individuals. To address hypotheses i-ii, we have conducted a validation study, MAX, (n ~500) which is a sub-cohort of the Danish Diet, Cancer and Health- Next Generations cohort (DCH-NG; n=45 000) where samples were collected at 0, 6 and 12 months across gender, age and fasting strata with the aim to explore whether we can group individuals into different metabotypes based on the data collected and explore if we can find metabolomics biomarkers of such metabotypes. The data collection was finalized in February 2019. Metabolomics and gut microbiota analyses are currently in progress. In parallel, we are preparing for a dietary intervention study to evaluate if individuals with signs of metabolic syndrome belonging to two different enterotypes will have differential responses to fermentable or non-fermentable cereal fibre. Individuals will be screened and enterotyped based on the high vs low presence of Prevotella. Participants will then undergo a 6 week cross-over intervention with fermentable- vs nonfermentable fiber and differential effects across enterotypes will be compared. Three fermentable fiber products and matched control products will be provided by industrial collaborators. Cardiometabolic risk factors are the primary outcomes and effects on the metabolome and gut microbiome will also be evaluated. We expect that our project will i) provide insight into diet x microbiota interactions; ii) provide novel methods for grouping individuals according to their metabotype based on multiomics data; and iii) propose tailoring diet to distinct enterotypes as a novel disease revention strategy. The concepts and implications have been presented in an opinion paper published November 2019.
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Network HDHL-INTIMIC
Call HDHL-INTIMIC Cofunded Call "Interrelation of the Intestinal Microbiome, Diet and Health"

Project partner

Number Name Role Country
1 Chalmers University of Technology Coordinator Sweden
2 University of Barcelona Partner Spain
3 Federico II University Partner Italy