Scientists say that the gut microbiome – the trillion strong community of microorganisms in your abdomen – can help predict whether you have a long and healthy life.
U.S. researchers have identified clear signatures in the gut microbiome associated with healthy or unhealthy aging pathways.
In healthy individuals, intestinal microbiome becomes increasingly unique, and it differs in different ways that are specific to the individual, compared to unhealthy individuals.
This uniqueness is strongly associated with microbially-produced amino acid derivatives circulating in the bloodstream, indicating life-prolonging chemicals.
According to the experts, microbiomes can be used to predict survival in an older population.
The human microbiome is made up of communities of bacteria (and viruses and fungi). Data from more than 9,000 people show a clear gut microbiome signature associated with healthy aging and survival in the last decades of life
Researchers say that the microbiome of the intestines of advanced adults continues to develop in healthy individuals, but not in unhealthy ones.
In addition, microbiome formulations associated with health in early to middle adulthood may not be compatible with health in late adulthood.
‘Previous results in microbiome aging research appear to be inconsistent, with some reports showing a decrease in intestinal core in the centenary populations, while others show the relative stability of the microbiome up to the onset of aging – related declines in health,’ ‘ the study said. author Dr. Sean Gibbons at Institute for Systems Biology in the USA.
‘Our work, which is the first to include a detailed analysis of health and survival, can resolve these inconsistencies. We specifically show two clear aging trajectories.
‘One, a decrease in nuclear microbes and a concomitant increase in uniqueness in healthier individuals, consistent with previous results in hundred-year-old residents in the community, and two, the maintenance of nuclear microbes in less healthy individuals.’
Microbiota is also known as the microbiome – although this last term includes the collective genomes of the microorganisms in a particular environment, as well as the microorganisms.
The intestinal microbiome is an integral part of the body, but its importance in the human aging process was unclear.
The research team analyzed the intestinal microbiome, phenotypic and clinical data of more than 9,000 people between the ages of 18 and 101 in three independent groups.
The team focused in particular on longitudinal data from a group of more than 900 community-dwelling older individuals between 78 and 98 years old, enabling them to track health and survival outcomes.
The data showed that the intestinal microbiome became more and more unique and deviating from others’ microbiome as they got older, starting in mid to late adulthood.
This is consistent with a steady decline in the abundance of nuclear bacterial genera (eg Bacteroides) that tend to be shared by humans.
While microbiome has become increasingly unique to each individual in healthy aging, the metabolic functions that the microbiome had have common characteristics.
The data showed that intestinal microbiome became more unique (i.e., more and more deviant from others) as individuals got older, beginning in mid to late adulthood, which corresponds to a constant decrease in the abundance of nuclear bacterial genera (e.g. .Bacteroides) that tend to be shared across humans. Pictured in the artist’s impression is Bacteroides fragilis, one of the most important components of normal microbiome in the human gut.
This signature of intestinal uniqueness was strongly correlated with several microbial metabolites in blood plasma, including one – tryptophan-derived indole – which has previously been shown to prolong the lifespan of mice.
Blood levels of another metabolite – phenylacetylglutamine – have shown the strongest association with uniqueness.
Previous work has shown that this metabolite is greatly increased in people 100 years and older.
‘Interestingly, this unique pattern seems to start in the middle of life – 40-50 years old – and is associated with a clear blood metabolic signature, suggesting that these microbiome changes may not be merely diagnostic for healthy aging, but that it can also make a contribution. directly to health as we get older, ‘Wilmanski said.
The study was published in the journal Nature Metabolism.