According to results from a study at Cedars-Sinai, one specific type of bacteria found in the gut may lead to the development of type 2 diabetes, while another bacteria may prevent the disease from occurring.
As emphasized in the journal Diabetes, the researchers unveiled that higher levels of a bacterium known as Coprococcus yields higher insulin sensitivity. Higher levels of the bacterium Flavonifractor leads to lower insulin sensitivity.
“We analyzed associations between butyrate-producing taxa and detailed measures of insulin homeostasis, whose dysfunction underlies diabetes in 224 non-Hispanic Whites and 129 African Americans, all of whom completed an oral glucose tolerance test. Stool microbiome was assessed by whole-metagenome shotgun sequencing with taxonomic profiling,” the authors wrote in their study.
“Species-level analyses found 10 bacteria associated with beneficial directions of effects and two bacteria with adverse associations on insulin homeostasis and dysglycemia.”
“Although most butyrate producers analyzed appear to be metabolically beneficial, this is not the case for all such bacteria, suggesting that microbiome-directed therapeutic measures to prevent or treat diabetes should be targeted to specific butyrate-producing taxa rather than all butyrate producers.”
