09/18/2021 5:19 PM
Clarín.com
International
Updated 09/19/2021 12:21 PM
The success or failure
of losing weight
is largely determined by the
gut microbiota,
a finding that will serve to perform diagnostic tests and
identify people who are more likely to lose weight
with a healthy lifestyle and those who may need more drastic interventions.
The study, led by the
Seattle Institute for Systems Biology
in Washington state, was published in
mSystems
, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
"The gut microbiome can help or
cause resistance to weight loss
and this opens the possibility of trying to alter the gut microbiome to influence weight loss," summarizes the study's lead author,
Dr. Christian Diener.
Science is determining that not all people can face a diet starting from the same starting point.
To do the research, Diener and his team looked at
the lifestyles of 105 people
, but instead of imposing a specific diet or exercise program on them, the intervention consisted of a
behavioral training
program
.
During the year the study lasted,
48 individuals achieved
consistent
weight loss
and improved metabolic health markers, and
57 maintained stable weight.
Subsequently, the researchers studied metagenomics -
genetic material recovered from blood and stool samples
- and blood metabolites, blood proteins, clinical tests, dietary questionnaires, and gut bacteria of the two groups.
Poor eating behaviors are key to behavioral change that leads to a successful diet, but it is now known that it is not the whole.
Among other things, they observed that in the microbiomes of those who lost weight, the genes that help bacteria to grow faster, multiply and replicate increased, while in people who did not lose weight,
the ability of the intestinal microbiome to break down starches increased. .
"Before this study, we knew that the composition of bacteria in the gut was different in obese people than in non-obese people, but now we have seen that there is a
different set of genes encoded
in bacteria in our gut that also respond to weight loss interventions, "says Diener.
Therefore, "the gut microbiome is an important factor that modulates the success or not of an intervention to lose weight. The factors that dictate obesity versus non-obesity are not the same that dictate whether weight will be lost with a style intervention of life, "he concludes.
With information from EFE.