Human intestinal tract length and relationship with body height (916.4)

Abstract

Despite its great importance in surgical approaches to intestinal resection, little definitive information is available on human gut tract length. Previous studies have correlated various measures with sex, age, weight, height, and “ethnic background.” Better knowledge of these relationships may aid in avoidance of surgical complications such as the nutritional disorder “short bowel syndrome.” This study examined length of the intestinal tract and its components (small intestine and colon) in 10 donor bodies. The small intestine was measured from pyloric sphincter to ileocecal junction while the large intestine was measured from caecum to sigmoid colon. Results indicate strong correlation (r=0.827) between colon length and body height from cranial vertex to heel, likely a result of the colon's function in water absorption. This relationship was stronger than the ones among total gut length, small intestine length, and body height. In particular, the weakest correlation was between small intestine length and height (r=0.337), suggesting that the combined lengths of the duodenum, jejunum, and ileum are not closely related to body size. Indeed, this measure had the highest coefficient of variation (0.26) while colon length showed the lowest (0.085). Future research will test hypotheses related to population differences in gut length and its physiologic consequences.

Island biogeography theory provides a plausible explanation for why larger vertebrates and taller humans have more diverse gut microbiomes

“…Furthermore, BMI’s negative association with gut microbiome alpha diversity, and positive association with intestinal inflammation (which can cause shortening of the bowel through smooth muscle contractions), pushes against the overall positive scaling we see between body mass and diversity across vertebrates [ 75 , 79 ]. Thus, we used height, which has been shown to be positively associated with bowel length [ 83–86 ], as an obesity/inflammation-independent proxy for measuring body size in humans. Overall, we were able to control for all of these potentially confounding variables in our regressions, and we found that the associations between height and gut alpha diversity were robust to the inclusion of these variables across two large, independent cohorts ( Table 1 ).…”

Bipartición de tránsito intestinal, la nueva era de la cirugía metabólica para la diabetes mellitus de tipo 2

“…El péptido GLP-1 promueve la proliferación de las células beta, la sensibilidad a la insulina, la cardioprotección, mejora la función cardiaca, favorece la neuroprotección y la neuroproliferación, y mejora la función cognitiva [21][22][23][24][25][26] .…”

Intraoperative Determination of the Actual Length of the Small and Large Intestine and its Relation to Anthropometric Variables in the Egyptian Population

“…The average length is considered to be approximately 5 meters. 1 The variation in the intestinal length in humans is a topic of interest. Differences in measurement techniques, small study groups, and large interindividual variation have contributed to the uncertainty associated with defining a normal range of intestinal length.…”