Steatosis and gut microbiota dysbiosis induced by high-fat diet are reversed by 1-week chow diet administration

Abstract

Many studies have recently shown that diet and its impact on gut microbiota are closely related to obesity and metabolic diseases including nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Gut microbiota may be an important intermediate link, causing gastrointestinal and metabolic diseases under the influence of changes in diet and genetic predisposition. The aim of this study was to assess the reversibility of liver phenotype in parallel with exploring the resilience of the mice gut microbiota by switching high-fat diet (HFD) to chow diet (CD). Mice were fed an HF for 8 weeks. A part of the mice was euthanized, whereas the rest were then fed a CD. These mice were euthanized after 3 and 7 days of feeding with CD, respectively. Gut microbiota composition, serum parameters, and liver morphology were assessed. Eight weeks of HFD treatment induced marked liver steatosis in mice with a perturbed microbiome. Interestingly, only 7 days of CD was enough to recover the liver to a normal status, whereas the microbiome was accordingly reshaped to a close to initial pattern. The abundance of some of the bacteria including Prevotella, Parabacteroides, Lactobacillus, and Allobaculum was reversible upon diet change from HFD to CD. This suggests that microbiome modifications contribute to the metabolic effects of HFD feeding and that restoration of a normal microbiota may lead to improvement of the liver phenotype. In conclusion, we found that steatosis and gut microbiota dysbiosis induced by 8 weeks of high-fat diet can be reversed by 1 week of chow diet administration, and we identified gut bacteria associated with the metabolic phenotype.

Early life Western diet-induced memory impairments and gut microbiome changes in female rats are long-lasting despite healthy dietary intervention

“…In contrast to our results, some studies have reported that dietary interventions involving a switch to healthier diets following WD can alleviate gut dysbiosis in rodents [73][74][75] and in humans [76,77]. Our results, however, show an even greater divergence in the microbiome relative to chow-fed rats after switching from either a SUG or a CAF diet to a healthy standard chow diet for ∼5 weeks, especially in the CAF animals.…”

Early life Western diet-induced memory impairments and gut microbiome changes in female rats are long-lasting despite healthy dietary intervention

“…In contrast to our results, some studies have reported that dietary interventions involving a switch to healthier diets following WD can alleviate gut dysbiosis in rodents (Zhang et al, 2012;Shang et al, 2017;Safari et al, 2019) and in humans (Haro et al, 2017;Qian et al, 2020). Our results, however, show an even greater divergence in the microbiome relative to controls after switching from either a SUG or a CAF diet to a healthy control diet for ~5 weeks, especially in the CAF animals.…”

Murine Genetic Background Overcomes Gut Microbiota Changes to Explain Metabolic Response to High-Fat Diet

“…Diet is considered as one of the most critical environmental factors shaping gut microbial structures [40][41][42]. HFD feedings were observed to be linked with alterations in the gut microbial content as well as decreased diversity [19,42,43].…”