Gut Microbiome Pattern in Human Aging and Survival
The gut microbiome has important effects on human health, but it is still unclear how aging is affected by this microbiome . In the following study, Wilmanski et al. demonstrate that, starting in mid-to-late adulthood, gut microbiomes become increasingly unique to individuals with age.
They leverage three independent cohorts comprising over 9,000 individuals and find that compositional uniqueness is strongly associated with microbially produced amino acid derivatives circulating in the bloodstream.
In older age (~80 years and older), healthy individuals show continued microbial drift towards a unique compositional state, whereas this drift is absent in less healthy individuals. The identified microbiome pattern of healthy ageing is characterized by a depletion of core genera found across most humans, primarily Bacteroides. Retaining a high Bacteroides dominance into older age, or having a low gut microbiome uniqueness measure, predicts decreased survival in a 4-year follow-up.
This analysis identifies increasing compositional uniqueness of the gut microbiome as a component of healthy ageing, which is characterized by distinct microbial metabolic outputs in the blood.
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