Westernisation linked gut microbiota is associated with obesity and cardiometabolic disease

Our gut microbiota is essential to human health. However, unravelling the ways in which this microbial community correlates to health is not straightforward, due to the diversity and complexity of the organisms and the individual. Westernisation, characterised by changes in diet, reduced physical activity and increased prevalence of non-communicable disease, is associated with changes in gut microbiota.

Previous studies looking to understand gut microbiota focus on extremely different populations; usually hunter-gatherers versus urban inhabitants of industrialised countries. This study, published in Nature, instead focuses on a population of 441 Colombian adults, who are in the midst of westernisation. They found that the gut microbiota of these non-western, non-traditional Colombians forms a complex enterogradient, on which features of hunter-gatherers and citizens of industrialized nations can be identified.

In order to investigate the relationships, this paper distinguished groups based on variation in microbiota, then mapped variables relating to host health afterwards. This allowed the discovery of well-defined consortia, associated with obesity, cardiometabolic risk and metabolic pathways through which microbiota could have an impact on health. Their findings illustrate the multiple ways in which the microbiota can affect health and disease. Furthermore, it suggests that strategies to promote a healthy microbiome might be an effective means of alleviating conditions contributing to the burden of disease in Western societies.