Forskning

August 28, 2012

A metabolomics view on gut microbiome modulation by polyphenol rich foods

ABSTRACT

Health is influenced by genetic, lifestyle, and diet determinants, therefore nutrition plays an essential role in health management. Still, the substantiation of nutritional health benefits is challenged by the intrinsic macro- and micronutrient complexity of foods and individuals’ responses. Evidence of healthy effects of food requires not only new strategies to stratify populations according to their metabolic requirements, but also to predict and measure individual responses to dietary intakes. The influence of the gut microbione and its interaction with the host is pivotal to understand nutrition and metabolism. Thus, the modulation of the gut microbiome composition by alteration of food habits has potentialities in health improvement or even disease prevention. Dietary polyphenols are naturally occurring constituents in vegetables and fruits, including coffee and cocoa. They are commonly associated to health benefits, although mechanistic evidence in vivo  is not yet fully understood. Polyphenols are extensively metabolized by gut bacteria into a complex series of end-products which support a significant effect on the functional ecology of symbolic partners which can affect the host physiology. This review reports recent nutritional metabolomics inspection of gut microbial-host metabolic interactions with a particular focus on the co-metabolism of cocoa and coffee polyphenols.