Obesity is helped by clostridia
Biologists from the USA have discovered the bacteria that cause obesity
Scientists have found special microbes in the intestines of mice fed on fatty Western foods that promote the absorption of fat during digestion of food and accelerate the development of obesity, according to an article published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.
"These bacteria turned out to be one of the key links in the chain of events leading to the fact that the intestine begins to absorb fats more efficiently. Few people have studied the microflora of the small intestine, and we were the first to show that these bacteria control the digestion and absorption of fats, and play a huge role in the development of obesity and heart disease," said Eugene Chang from the University of Chicago (in a press release Specific bacteria in the small intestine are crucial for fat absorption – VM).
In recent years, scientists have uncovered many negative features of the Western diet, which is characterized by a large number of calories and fatty foods. For example, a year ago, scientists discovered that fatty foods contribute to the development of Alzheimer's disease and change the work of the brain in such a way that a person begins to eat even more, and two years ago they found out that fast food makes a person forget what he has already eaten.
On the other hand, the very reason why the Western diet makes people gain weight quickly and not lose it even after giving up fast food and other "gifts of civilization" remained a mystery to scientists.
Chang and his colleagues found out what this was due to, trying to understand why mice with purified intestinal microflora almost did not gain excess weight, as did their relatives who sat on a normal or typically "Western" diet with a lot of fat and calories.
Observing the work of the digestive organs of rodents, scientists noticed that the intestines of mice without microflora absorbed and digested fatty foods much worse than the body of the other two groups of mice did. This was supported by the fact that there was almost no cholesterol and other types of fat molecules in their blood, while their proportion in their excrement was unusually high.
Having revealed the connection between microflora and the digestion of fatty foods, Chang and his colleagues tried to find microbes associated with the absorption and breakdown of fats by observing how the species composition of the microflora of the small intestine changes when switching to a Western diet.
It turned out that microbes from the Clostridiaceae family were "to blame" for this, many representatives of which, as scientists found out during experiments on cultures of intestinal tissue in a test tube, isolated a large number of enzymes that broke down fats and accelerated their absorption into the body.
The appearance of new portions of fats, in turn, accelerated the reproduction of these microbes and forced them to displace other inhabitants of the microflora, which are usually associated with normal digestion and low body weight.
Having selected several of the most "effective" versions of these "pathogens of obesity", the scientists added them to the diet of mice with purified intestines that ate fatty foods. Such a procedure deprived them of invulnerability to excess calories and forced them to gain weight quickly.
Further study of these bacteria, as the authors of the article hope, will help us understand how to slow down their spread through the microflora and protect the human body from the development of obesity.
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