Bacteria in the gut. Image: Donny Bliss/National Institutes of Health
At a glance:
- Researchers investigated the gut microbiome and type 2 diabetes risk in the largest and most diverse study of its kind to date.
- They found that specific species and strains of gut microbes were more common in people with type 2 diabetes.
- The findings, if confirmed, may mean that the gut microbiome can be altered to reduce type 2 diabetes risk.
The composition of the gut microbiome may affect the likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes, according to the largest and most ethnically and geographically comprehensive study of its kind to date.
Scientists investigated the gut microbiome — the collection of bacteria, fungi, and viruses in our intestines — of people with type 2 diabetes, prediabetes, or healthy blood glucose levels. They found that specific viruses and genetic variants within bacteria correspond with changes in gut microbiome function and an increased risk of type 2 diabetes.
If further research confirms that these changes indeed contribute to the development of type 2 diabetes, researchers could use that knowledge to try to manipulate the microbiome to reduce type 2 diabetes risk, the authors said.
Research over the past decade had linked changes in the gut microbiome to the development of type 2 diabetes, but scientists had not been able to draw significant conclusions because of those studies’ small size and varied design.
“The microbiome is highly variable across different geographic locations and racial and ethnic groups. If you only study a small, homogeneous population, you will probably miss something,” said co-corresponding author Daniel (Dong) Wang, Harvard Medical School assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
“The gut microbiome's relationship to complex, chronic, heterogeneous diseases like type 2 diabetes is quite subtle,” added co-corresponding author Curtis Huttenhower, professor of computational biology and bioinformatics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. “Large and diverse populations are necessary — and increasingly feasible — for detailed microbiome variation studies.”
The new study, a collaboration between researchers at HMS, Brigham and Women’s, the Broad Institute, and Harvard Chan School, published June 25 in Nature Medicine.