Released in Nature Metabolism, researchers affiliated with the Institute for Systems Biology showcased an important association between gut microbiome and healthy aging.
Their new findings were established by analyzing clinical data from nearly 10,000 participants, aged 18 to 101.
Based on their assessment of the data, gut microbiomes become purportedly distinct as one ages, beginning in middle or late adulthood.
From the study: “We leverage three independent cohorts comprising over 9,000 individuals and find that compositional uniqueness is strongly associated with microbially produced amino acid derivatives circulating in the bloodstream. In older age, healthy individuals show continued microbial drift towards a unique compositional state, whereas this drift is absent in less healthy individuals.”
“The identified microbiome pattern of healthy ageing is characterized by a depletion of core genera found across most humans, primarily Bacteroides. Retaining a high Bacteroides dominance into older age, or having a low gut microbiome uniqueness measure, predicts decreased survival in a 4-year follow-up,” the study also reads.
“Our analysis identifies increasing compositional uniqueness of the gut microbiome as a component of healthy ageing, which is characterized by distinct microbial metabolic outputs in the blood,” the authors concluded in their Nature article.
