Gut microbes identified to be associated with incidence of diabetes

Four species of gut microbes have been identified that may help predict incident type 2 diabetes. According to researchers from Finland, the findings open the door for the potential to use the gut microbiome to improve disease prediction and find new treatments. Results were published in Diabetes Care. The authors noted that several recent studies reported a link between gut microbiome composition and type 2 diabetes. Gut microbes could be involved in inflammation modulation, increased gut permeability, interactions with dietary constituents, glucose and lipid metabolisms, insulin sensitivity, and effects on overall energy homeostasis of the host. But studies have not included prospective data on incident diabetes. This study was intended to determine the long-term association between gut microbiome composition and incident type 2 diabetes in a well-phenotyped and wide population sample with follow-up of up to 16 years. To conduct the study, researchers used data from the long-term FINRISK population study which included fecal samples from over 7,000 participants, as well as details of various health measures, medication use and more. Researchers used fecal samples from 5,572 Finns that were collected in 2002 and who were followed-up for incident type 2 diabetes up until the end of December 2017. Samples from people with diabetes at baseline and those taking antidiabetic drugs were excluded. The samples were studied and sequenced using shotgun metagenomics—a technology that allows researchers to comprehensively sample all genes in all organisms present in complex samples. The data were divided into participants from eastern Finland (3,871 participants) and western Finland (1,701 participants). This was done because east and west Finns have well-known differences in genetic background, lifestyle, and mortality rates. Overall, the study population had an average age of 48.7 years at baseline, had an average BMI of 26.6, consisted of 3,013 (54.1%) women and had an average hemoglobin A1 of 35.8mmol/mol. A total of 432 (7.8%) of the entire population developed incident type 2 diabetes (293 or 7.6% of easter Finns and 139 or 8.2% of western Finns). The eastern and western Finland subpopulations had statistically significant differences in BMI, systolic blood pressure, non-HDL cholesterol, and blood glucose levels, the study said. Four species and two clusters of microbes were consistently to be associated with incident diabetes. They are also known to be associated with other metabolic diseases and risk factors such as obesity, and liver disease. “We identified four species in the family Lachnospiraceae robustly associated with a higher type 2 diabetes risk,” in both the east and west populations, the study said. “Three of these taxa could be clustered together by proportional abundance in both geographic areas, and combined abundance of the four taxa was also predictive of incident type 2 diabetes.” These four species were Clostridium citroniae, C. bolteae, Tyzzerella nexilis, and Ruminococcus gnavus. The positively associated clusters, cluster 1 and cluster 5, mostly consisted of these same species. The researchers concluded “our results should be further validated with studies in suitable cohorts to address their generalizability…The current study thus serves as a stepping stone toward the goal of improved prediction and the development of effective treatments for type 2 diabetes through modification of the gut microbiome.”

Gut microbes identified to be associated with incidence of diabetes

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