Impact of a Healthy Dietary Pattern on Gut Microbiota and Systemic Inflammation in Humans

Abstract

Gut microbiota have recently been suggested to play a part in low-grade systemic inflammation, which is considered a key risk factor for cardiometabolic disorders. Diet is known to affect gut microbiota; however, the effects of diet and dietary components on gut microbiota and inflammation are not fully understood. In the present review, we summarize recent research on human dietary intervention studies, investigating the effects of healthy diets or dietary components on gut microbiota and systemic inflammation. We included 18 studies that reported how different dietary components altered gut microbiota composition, short-chain fatty acid levels, and/or inflammatory markers. However, the heterogeneity among the intervention studies makes it difficult to conclude whether diets or dietary components affect gut microbiota homeostasis and inflammation. More appropriately designed studies are needed to better understand the effects of diet on the gut microbiota, systemic inflammation, and risk of cardiometabolic disorders.

Milk polar lipids reduce lipid cardiovascular risk factors in overweight postmenopausal women: towards a gut sphingomyelin-cholesterol interplay

“…The primary outcome was the effect over 4 weeks of the daily consumption of milk PL (one control group and two increasing doses) on fasting serum concentration of total cholesterol (C), defined as the difference between V1 and V2. The 4-week period of intervention has been chosen in line with the previous trials reporting the health effects of milk PL or buttermilk14 15 26 and to study adequately the potential changes in gut microbiota composition, which is mostly investigated in dietary interventions >3 weeks 27 28…”

Oligosaccharides and Complex Carbohydrates: A New Paradigm for Cranberry Bioactivity

“…Together, these initial microbiome profiling studies [74,75,150] indicate that the consumption of cranberry materials may beneficially affect microbiome profiles and offset some of the negative effects of inflammation, promoting the abundance of the phylum Bacteroidetes and several genera of organisms believed to be beneficial for overall health. Unknowns far outweigh the knowns, however, in terms of how these findings may change with different study populations, in the presence of various diseases, or as a result of diverse dietary components or host factors [293]. The applicability of these findings to other cranberry materials is also unknown, but the diverse chemical composition of multiple products is likely to have significant and differing effects on possible results (see Section 1).…”

Assessment of Ecosystem Services and Capabilities of Communities from different Scales and Niches - Implications on Sustainability Goals

“…The aforementioned communities in this study were chosen due to one other overarching reason -the possibility offered by the application of systems thinking (Williams et al, 2017) to reveal their interconnectedness ( Table 1). As an example, Western diets are known to have negative impacts on gut microbial communities which dispose the affected individuals to a plethora of modern diseases (Telle-Hansen et al, 2018). As a result, researchers have started to study the gut microbial communities of ILCs as a means of discovering new knowledge and practices such as diet for restoring gut health (Stagaman et al, 2018).…”