Diet and exercise orthogonally alter the gut microbiome and reveal independent associations with anxiety and cognition

Abstract

BackgroundThe ingestion of a high-fat diet (HFD) and the resulting obese state can exert a multitude of stressors on the individual including anxiety and cognitive dysfunction. Though many studies have shown that exercise can alleviate the negative consequences of a HFD using metabolic readouts such as insulin and glucose, a paucity of well-controlled rodent studies have been published on HFD and exercise interactions with regard to behavioral outcomes. This is a critical issue since some individuals assume that HFD-induced behavioral problems such as anxiety and cognitive dysfunction can simply be exercised away. To investigate this, we analyzed mice fed a normal diet (ND), ND with exercise, HFD diet, or HFD with exercise.ResultsWe found that mice on a HFD had robust anxiety phenotypes but this was not rescued by exercise. Conversely, exercise increased cognitive abilities but this was not impacted by the HFD. Given the importance of the gut microbiome in shaping the host state, we used 16S rRNA hypervariable tag sequencing to profile our cohorts and found that HFD massively reshaped the gut microbial community in agreement with numerous published studies. However, exercise alone also caused massive shifts in the gut microbiome at nearly the same magnitude as diet but these changes were surprisingly orthogonal. Additionally, specific bacterial abundances were directly proportional to measures of anxiety or cognition.ConclusionsThus, behavioral domains and the gut microbiome are both impacted by diet and exercise but in unrelated ways. These data have important implications for obesity research aimed at modifications of the gut microbiome and suggest that specific gut microbes could be used as a biomarker for anxiety or cognition or perhaps even targeted for therapy.

Connections Between the Gut Microbiome and Metabolic Hormones in Early Pregnancy in Overweight and Obese Women

“…This pattern of increased abundance of Firmicutes and Actinobacteria with decreased abundance of Bacteroidetes has previously been reported in nonpregnant obese, insulin-resistant subjects (33,38,39). Moreover, consumption of a high-fat diet in rodents for 2 weeks reduces the relative abundance of Tenericutes (40). At the family level, the abundance of Lachnospiraceae, from phylum Firmicutes, and Rikenellaceae, from phylum Bacteroidetes, were positively correlated with BMI.…”

Exercise and Dietary Factors Affecting the Microbiota: Current Knowledge and Future Perspectives

“…High fat diet (HFD) induces metabolic and gut microbial changes [20][21][22] Although, exercise has shown to effectively reverse some of the detrimental metabolic effects of a HFD, the potential effect of exercise restoring the altered microbiota caused by HFD is still on debate. An 8-week, four-arm study analyzed the effect of HFD (60% of calories from fat) and exercise (1 h/ session, 6 d/week for 8 weeks at a speed of 7 m/min) on gut diversity.…”

“…The type of diet differed among the studies, the study performed by Kang et al [20] utilized a 60% fat-based diet, while the diets provided by both Denou & Campbell et al [21,22] consisted on a 45% fat-based diet. The studies that involved the diet with 45% of energy coming from fat were able to revert with exercise the effects in the microbiota caused by HFD, while the study utilizing a higher percentage of fat (60%) was not able to observe this restoration.…”

“…The type of training protocol is the second variable that could have contributed to the differential results. The study performed by Kang et al [20] used continuous aerobic exercise (7 m/min, 1h/day, 6d/week for 8 weeks), the study by Denou et al [21] involved high intensity interval training (17m/min for 2 min at a 5 % rate with 2min resting intervals, 1 h/day, 3 d/week for 6 d/ week), while the study by Campbell et al [22] involved free wheel running (12 weeks). The intensity of the workout might have a different effect in the oxygen provision to the colon which has shown to affect the kind of bacteria that is able to survive (aerobic versus anaerobic bacteria).…”

Obesity and cognitive dysfunction

“…Kang S.S. и соавт. предполагают, что конкретные микробы ки-шечника могут быть использованы в качестве биомар-кера для оценки познавательной способности у лиц с ожирением [37].…”