Great ape bowel bacteria reveals how the human microbiome has changed

Scientists have discovered changes in the human microbiome when compared to those of our closest relatives, the Great Apes.

Scientists who examined the bacteria in chimpanzee and gorilla faeces discovered that they have seasonal changes in the type of intestinal flora brought about by the changes in their diet at different times of the year. Whereas humans are now able to source all kinds of food throughout the year which means that the intestinal flora stays the same.  According to scientists, who now place increasing emphasis  on the importance on the role  of gut bacteria in human health this could implications for our wellbeing.


The types and numbers of bacterial species that inhabit the human gut depend on what we eat.  And, as humans have changed their diet over time, the microbiome has followed suit, according to a recent study published in Nature Communications.

The Western diet, in particular, is wholly different to that of our ancestors just 100 years ago — let alone early humans who walked the earth millions of years ago.

The human digestive system, though it does have differences from our closest relatives — the other great apes — is relatively similar. And, when our species first split and went off on our own evolutionary path, our diets probably had a lot in common, too.This means that the bacteria types living in our gut were, at least initially, pretty similar to our hairier cousins. There are still similarities today, but, as our diet has shifted, so has our microbiome.What this huge change in our diet means for our microbiome and related health is a tricky question to answer.

Researchers at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York City, NY, investigated ape bowel waste. Specifically, they examined fecal samples from great apes living in the Sangha region of the Republic of Congo, collected by the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Their sampling was spread over three years, in order to give them an idea of how gut bacteria populations shifted seasonally.

The authors noted that, in chimpanzees and gorillas, the microbiome changed significantly with the seasons, along with their diet. In the hot, dry summer, for instance, fruits are their primary food source, whereas for the rest of the year, their diet is mostly fibrous leaves and bark.

Brent L. Williams, Ph.D., an assistant professor of epidemiology, explains one of the primary changes they evidenced:  “Bacteria that help gorillas break down fibrous plants,” he says, “are replaced once a year by another group of bacteria that feed on the mucous layer in their gut during the months they are eating fruits.”

Interestingly, the changes mirrored those of the Hadza hunter-gatherer people from Tanzania, who similarly rely on seasonal food availability.

In contrast, as far as the average U.S. citizen’s microbiome is concerned, seasonal changes do not occur. We can access pretty much any food type we want at any point in the year.

The team noted other differences, too. According to first study author Allison L. Hicks, “While our human genomes share a great deal of similarity with those of our closest living relatives, our second genome (the microbiome) has some important distinctions, including reduced diversity and the absence of bacteria and archaea that appear to be important for fibre fermentation.” Do these differences matter to our health?

“The fact that our microbiomes are so different from our nearest living evolutionary relatives says something about how much we’ve changed our diets, consuming more protein and animal fat at the expense of fibre,” says Williams.

As mentioned earlier, during the fibre-poor summer months, the microbiome of the great ape is dominated by a strain that feeds on the gut’s mucous layer.”Many humans may be living in a constant state of fibre deficiency. Such a state may be promoting the growth of bacteria that degrade our protective mucous layer, which may have implications for intestinal inflammation, even colon cancer.”

As Hicks says, “Understanding how these lost microbes influence health and disease will be an important area for future studies.”

Gut health comes under the spotlight as its now implicated in many diseases

Improving your gut health is a simple way to make a real difference to your health and wellbeing, particular since it is now implicated in many diseases.

It’s also that time again when we pledge to become fitter, better versions of ourselves. In fact, the majority (61%) of British women make at least one New Year’s resolution, according to a new survey commissioned by constipation treatment Dulcolax. Health resolutions usually top the list: more than a third (37%) of women have pledged to eat more healthily and exercise more (35%), 14% have said they’ll aim to drink less alcohol, and more than one in ten (12%) have used the New Year to try a fad diet.

The vast majority fail to stick to their plans, however, with research also showing that 82% of women broke their resolutions last year*, with over half (62%) breaking them in 30 days or less*. A quarter (25%) say they got bored*, one in five (20%) say their resolution didn’t fit with their life*, while 17% say their lack of will power is to blame.

The research from Dulcolax also shines a light on the possible secrets to success with one in five (19%) women saying they would make more resolutions if they were easier to stick to and 13% would if their new habit had more of a noticeable impact on their lives.
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Kate Arnold is a nutritionist and gut expert with years of experience helping clients make healthy changes. She says: “While it’s a good idea to re-examine your habits to make some healthy goals for the year ahead, completely overhauling your lifestyle in January is almost guaranteed to fail. I always recommend making realistic New Year’s resolutions, broken down into achievable and measurable steps so you can see your progress. We all slip up now and then. Instead of beating yourself up every time you reach for the biscuit tin or get the bus instead of walking home, remember that every day is an opportunity to take control of your health.”

Kate Arnold continues: “If kick-starting a healthy lifestyle feels like a mammoth task, focusing on optimising your gut health could be a simple way to improve your overall wellbeing. Eating plenty of fruit, vegetables and soluble fibre like porridge, and drinking lots of water will keep your digestive system working well, while gentle exercise will keep your gut and bowel working as they should. Our gastrointestinal system, and particularly our gut flora, has a significant impact on the rest of our body – affecting everything from moods to weight. Anyone who’s had even a fairly minor problem with their digestion, like a bout of constipation, knows it can massively affect how you feel. Instead of setting yourself another unrealistic resolution that won’t last longer than the Christmas tree, try taking care of yourself by looking after your gut.”

For lifestyle changes and tips for a healthy bowel and avoiding common issues like constipation visit www.myconstipationrelief.com.

If lifestyle changes aren’t working, and you find yourself experiencing constipation, you may need a little extra support in the form of a treatment, like Dulcolax. Dulcolax tablets, £2.24 for a pack of 20, provide predictable overnight relief from constipation and are available from pharmacies and supermarkets nationwide.

About the survey
The survey of 2,003 people, including 1,035 women, was conducted by Censuswide between 02.11.2016 and 04.11.2016.

*Stats taken from a survey of 2,003 people, including 1,028 women, conducted by Censuswide between 26.10.2016 and 28.10.2016.

About Kate Arnold
Kate Arnold is a nutritionist with more than 18 years’ experience specialising in gastrointestinal disorders. She works with a range of organisations and individuals from her clinic in Sussex.

Disclaimer: Kate Arnold does not endorse Dulcolax or any other medicine.

Further tips and advice:

If trying to overhaul your health seems like a mammoth task this New Year, focusing on your gut is a simple and effective way to improve your overall health and wellbeing. To make 2017 the year you take control of your gut health, nutritionist Kate Arnold has the following tips:

Eat lots of the good stuff – fruit and veg are superstars for a reason. As well as containing essential vitamins and nutrients for the whole body, they’re high in fibre which is crucial for a strong digestive system, keeping you regular and avoiding issues like constipation. In particular onions, garlic, leeks, asparagus, dark green leafy vegetables and unripe bananas help promote the right environment for gut flora to grow
Avoid junk food – processed food tends to be higher in fat, salt and sugar: all of which can overload your system and put pressure on your gut. Cooking for yourself is also a great exercise in mindfulness and a stress reliever, plus you know exactly what you’re eating
Stay hydrated – don’t overlook liquids as they also impact the gut. Avoid too much dehydrating caffeine and alcohol, and drink plenty of water
Eat slowly and mindfully – really paying attention to your food and not shovelling it down means you can appreciate what you’re putting in to your body, so you’re more likely to pick things that are good for it, rather than choosing convenience or cravings.
Eat good fats – fatty oils like omega-3 are essential for your brain, and if you’re feeling good, you’re more likely to take good care of yourself. Pick oily fish, nuts and avocados, and avoid trans fats or partially hydrogenated oils which have a negative impact on your body and mind in the long term
Check for intolerances or allergies – try eliminating a certain food for a while if you suspect you’re intolerant, and get tested if you’re worried
Eat smaller portions – sometimes it takes a while to realise we’re full so we can end up overeating, which can make our digestive systems sluggish and cause constipation. If you’re still hungry in half an hour, have some more!
Write a food diary to see if you’re really eating enough of the good stuff, and not too much of the bad. Looking at your food for the week can show up any gaps or excesses
Figure out triggers for bad habits – a food diary is also helpful here. Write down how you felt and what was going on at the time of eating to see if there are certain things that affect your eating, e.g. eating sugary, high-fat foods when you’re stressed
Talk to your doctor – if you have specific concerns always talk to your doctor

For more advice on having a healthy gut go to www.myconstipationrelief.com

Love your gut – the key to good health!

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London: To mark the 10th anniversary of Gut Week, which is taking place now until the 20th July, a new website has been launched urging people to get in touch with their digestive systems and look after their gut health.

www.loveyourgut.com aims to get people thinking and talking about digestive health. Around a third of people in the UK regularly suffer from digestive symptoms[1] – yet the subject remains taboo, with a widespread reluctance to recognise and confront gut health problems.

Gut Week is a joint campaign, run by digestive health charities Core, The Gut Trust and St Mark’s Hospital, Harrow in association with Yakult.

Campaign supporter, This Morning’s Dr Chris Steele believes < ahref="http://www.loveyourgut.com">www.loveyourgut.com will help get people thinking more about digestive health. “It can be hard for many people to seek medical advice over bowel problems as they feel embarrassed or don’t know what to say,” said Dr Steele.

“There is no substitute for seeing your GP or practice nurse, but if people need to check their symptoms, learn what terminology to use or just use it to learn more about their bodies, then this new site could be the first step they take on the path to better digestive health.”

The need for a comprehensive site for digestive problems has become vital. Recent research has shown that just 11% of people would willingly discuss bowel habits with workmates, whilst 40% would not seek medical advice even if they detected a change in bowel function[2]. However, over a third of us say we do use the internet to gain health advice[3] .
www.loveyourgut.com offers simple, accessible, practical help and advice on digestive health, including:

· A wide range of tips for achieving and maintaining good digestive health, from experts such as Nicki Waterman and Dr. Nick Read;

· Advice on potentially serious digestive symptoms to watch out for – and what to do if any warning signs are detected;

· A practical guide on communicating gut problems to your GP

· A monthly ‘Ask the Doctor’ column, where experts will answer your digestive queries online;

· A complete guide to each of the components of the digestive system (there are more than you think!), with details on the vital role played by each one;

· Fascinating digestive facts (did you know if all the bacteria in your intestines were all lined up side by side, they would stretch twice round the equator?);

· A comprehensive overview of many of the most common digestive complaints, with information on causes and symptoms as well as prevention and treatment;

· ‘Gut-friendly’ recipes from Love Your Gut supporters such as Antony Worrall Thompson;

· Profiles of the many celebrities and experts who support the Gut Week campaign, including amongst others Gaby Roslin, Denise Welch, former Olympic swimmer James Hickman, Antony Worrall Thompson, Ian Marber (The Food Doctor) and This Morning’s Dr. Chris Steele.

· Fun educational activities including the exclusive ‘Gut Game’ where you will find yourself in charge of a sandwich as it makes its way through the gut!

Fast food harms the liver

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Too much fast food and too little exercise can harm the liver in just one month, research suggests.

A small study found that people who ate junk food twice a day experienced varying degrees of damage to their liver.

They also put on large amounts of weight in a relatively short amount of time.

Twelve men and six women – 17 of whom were students – were recruited for the study, published online in the journal Gut.

They were all healthy and slim, but for the study they ate at least two fast food meals a day, preferably from well-known fast food restaurants.

Exercise was also restricted to under 5,000 steps per day each.

Blood samples were taken at the start of the study, two weeks into the study and after four weeks.

Participants were urged to greatly increase their daily calorie intake, and only stopped the trial early if they gained 15% in weight.

Another group ate a normal healthy diet and acted as controls.

Women given liver transplants outlive male recipients by about four years

Birmingham: Female liver transplant recipients outlive men given the same procedure by an average of 4.5 years, suggests UK research to be published in the medical journal Gut.

And while younger people tend to live longest of all, they also stand to lose more years of their life compared with those who have not had liver transplants, the research shows.

The research team assessed the life expectancy and years of life lost of 2702 people who had received a liver transplant between 1985 and 2003, and who had survived more than six months afterwards.

The information was taken from the National Transplant Database, held by UK Transplant, and compared with that from healthy people matched for age and sex.

The analysis showed that, on average, after reaching the critical six month period, survival time for liver transplant recipients was 22 years compared with 29 years for the general population.

The life expectancy of male liver transplant recipients was 18 years compared with 26 years for women.

This compares with 27 years for men and 31 years for women in the general population, equating to twice as many years of life lost for male transplant recipients compared with their female counterparts.

Those aged between 17 and 34 had the highest life expectancy of 28 years after a liver transplant. But this compares with a life expectancy of 51 years for their peers in the general population.

Transplant recipients with primary liver disease fared significantly better than those undergoing the procedure because of hepatitis C infection, cirrhosis, or cancer.

The authors note that while one year survival rates have increased over time, death rates beyond this period have remained more or less the same.

They attribute this to the types of patients undergoing the procedure, who now include older, sicker patients, as well as the use of more “marginal” livers.

Gut bug clue to life-threatening diseases

London: Altering the makeup of bugs in the gut could be a way of tackling insulin resistance and related problems such as non alcoholic fatty liver disease, according to new research published this week.

The study also has implications for the treatment of associated conditions such as type 2 diabetes, obesity and heart disease.

The research shows that the type of microbes found in the guts of mice with a certain genetic makeup causes them to be pre-disposed to insulin resistance and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). On a high fat diet, these microbes transform the nutrient choline, found in food and essential for metabolising fat, into methylamines.

Scientists believe that these methylamines, which can only be produced by the microbes in the gut, lead to insulin resistance. In addition, because choline is needed to transport fat out of the liver, altering choline metabolism leads to fat accumulating in the liver and NAFLD.

The researchers are hopeful that their results in mice mean that they could intervene to change the makeup of gut microbes in people, to prevent their microbes from changing choline into methylamine. This would greatly reduce a person’s chances of becoming insulin resistant, developing NAFLD or suffering from associated problems.

The research is published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers from Imperial College London and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford.

Professor Jeremy Nicholson, senior author of the paper from Imperial College London, said: “It has been known for some time that a person’s genetic makeup can make them pre-disposed to insulin resistance and associated conditions. Finding out how this pre-disposition is linked to microbes in the gut offers us the prospect of tackling major health problems in people by intervening to change the makeup of these microbes. This is much more feasible than altering a person’s genetic makeup.”

The researchers measured the plasma and urine of two genetic strains of mice using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and computer modelling. One strain had a genetic predisposition to insulin resistance and NAFLD whilst the other strain did not.

The authors conclude their study provides more evidence that complex metabolic diseases are the product of the human and bacterial genomes as well as diet and lifestyle.

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For further information please contact:

Laura Gallagher
Press Officer
Communications Division
Imperial College London
Tel: +44 (0)20 7594 6702
E-mail: l.gallagher@imperial.ac.uk

Notes to editors:

1. “Metabolic profiling reveals a contribution of gut microbiota to fatty liver phenotype in insulin-resistant mice” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, August 15 2006

Marc-Emmanuel Dumas(1)*, Richard H Barton(1), Ayo Toye(3), Olivier Cloarec(1), Christine Blancher(3), Alice Rothwell(3), Jane Fearnside(3), Roger Tatoud(2), Veronique Blanc(2), John C Lindon(1), Elaine Holmes(1), Mark I McCarthy(3), James Scott(2), Dominique Gaugier(3), Jeremy K Nicholson(1)(2)*

(1) Department of Biological Chemistry, Imperial College London
(2) Genetics and Genomics Research Institute, Imperial College London
(3) Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford
* Corresponding authors

2. About non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)
NAFLD is a fatty inflammation of the liver related to insulin resistance that in its most extreme form can cause cirrhosis. There is currently no standard treatment for the disease and patients are usually encouraged to try weight loss or insulin sensitisers to reduce its effects. It is estimated to affect between 10-27% of the world’s population.

3.About Imperial College London
Consistently rated in the top three UK university institutions, Imperial College London is a world leading science-based university whose reputation for excellence in teaching and research attracts students (11,000) and staff (6,000) of the highest international quality. Innovative research at the College explores the interface between science, medicine, engineering and management and delivers practical solutions that enhance the quality of life and the environment – underpinned by a dynamic enterprise culture. Website: www.imperial.ac.uk

4.Imperial College London, in conjunction with Queen Mary and Westfield College London, Cambridge University and Oxford University was awarded a £5.4 million collaborative program grant funded by the Wellcome Trust www.wellcome.ac.uk Functional Genomics Development Initiative in 2002. The programme designated a Biological Atlas of Insulin Resistance www.bair.org.uk has been implemented by international investigators with expertise in insulin signalling, rodent genetics, human genetics, emergent ‘-omics’ sciences (metabonomics, proteomics, transcriptomics), bioinformatics, and structural biology.

Fat midriff doubles women’s chances of gallstone surgery

Lexington: A bulging midriff almost doubles a woman’s chances of developing gallstones and the need for surgery to remove them, finds an extensive study published in the medical magazine Gut.

In the developed world, gallstone disease is the most common abdominal illness requiring admission to hospital. And in the USA, more than 800,000 operations to remove gallstones are carried out every year. Most gallstones are nuggets of cholesterol.

The findings are based on comprehensive two yearly monitoring of more than 42,000 women in the United States, who were part of the Nurses Health Study.

The women were all aged between 39 and 66 in 1986, when the gallstone study began. None of the women had gallstones. All provided waist and hip measurements and details of their normal diet.

During the subsequent monitoring period to the year 2000, 3197 women required gallstone surgery.

After taking into account total body fat distribution as well as other risk factors for gallstone disease, women with waists of 36 inches or more were almost twice as likely to require surgery to remove gallstones as those whose waists measured 26 inches or less.

Waist to hip ratio, which divides the waist size by hip size, also boosted the risk by around 40% among women with a ratio of 0.86 compared with those whose ratio was 0.70 or less.

These results held true even if a woman was not generally overweight, as determined by body mass index.

The authors suggest that there are plausible biological explanations for a link between gallstones and the midriff bulge. The type of fat around the waist is more metabolically active than fat elsewhere on the body.

And previous research has also linked gallstones with the metabolic syndrome, a feature of which is excess abdominal fat.