COPENHAGEN (Dispatches) -- In a new research , scientists report how major disturbances occur in the gut microbiome of patients suffering from heart disease.
The human gut contains trillions of bacteria, collectively called the gut microbiome, which may have positive and negative effects on human health. When in balance they function as an inner chemistry factory producing numerous compounds that promote good health. However, an unhealthy lifestyle -- poor diet, smoking, lack of physical activity or disease -- can disrupt the balance, leading the microbiome to instead produce compounds that may trigger multiple non-communicable chronic disorders in people at high genetic risk, including myocardial infarction, angina or heart failure.
The researchers recruited 1,241 middle-aged people from Denmark, France and Germany including healthy individuals, individuals with obesity and type 2 diabetes but lacking a diagnosis of heart disease, and patients with either myocardial infarction, angina pectoris or heart failure. The investigators quantified about 700 different bacterial species and estimated their functions in the gut microbiome and compared these findings to more than 1,000 compounds circulating in blood with many of these compounds originating from the inner gut chemistry factory.
They found that about half of these gut bacteria and blood compounds were modified by drug treatment and not directly related to heart disease or the early disease stages like diabetes or obesity occurring prior to diagnosis of heart disease.Among the remaining half, about 75 percent of the disturbances of the gut microbiome occurred in the early disease stages of overweight and type 2 diabetes, many years before patients noticed any symptoms of heart disease.But, the early microbiome changes persisted in patients with heart disease who in addition showed specific heart disease related alterations in the composition and function of the gut microbiome.