Gut Microbiome May Influence Obesity

A new study may shed light on why some people gain more weight than others regardless of diet and activity levels. Led by researchers at the University of Copenhagen and published in the journal Microbiome, the study found that being overweight may also be related to the makeup of a person’s gut microbiome. The researchers studied 85 overweight adults and found that 40 percent of the participants had more Bacteroides in their gut microbiome, which are more effective at extracting nutrients from food, possibly causing leftover food to be stored as fat. Before they began their study, the researchers had hypothesized that a long digestive travel time would allow people to extract more energy from their food, but they found instead that people with shorter digestive travel times were actually the ones that extracted the most nutrition. Those with Bacteroides had shorter intestinal transit times and higher body weight.