A team led by researchers from the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones CientÃficas (CSIC) has identified a relationship between body weight and composition of gastrointestinal microflora in a study whose results may help design new strategies to combat obesity.
Sources with the CSIC, the work has been published in the journal Obesity and suggests that the intestinal microflora contributes to energy intake and body composition influences the regulation of body weight.
This new research on the relationship between specific components of the intestinal microflora, lifestyle and body weight regulation may be “key” to advance the development of new strategies for nutritional intervention to prevent obesity and associated metabolic diseases through modulation of the composition of the flora.
So says researcher Yolanda Sanz CSIC, Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology, who has participated in the study where 36 adolescents with obesity or overweight have been subjected to a treatment based on reducing energy intake and increased physical activity for ten weeks.
The research highlights the differences in the response of adolescents to the treatment applied, as most experienced a significant weight loss, more than four kilos, after treatment, but it was not in a subgroup of thirteen teenagers who lost less than two kilos.
The study suggests that these differences in response may be due in part to the specific composition of the intestinal microflora of individuals.
Thus, the group that experienced a significant weight loss had a higher proportion of Bacteroides and clostridia minor (types of intestinal bacteria) the group that did not experience a significant reduction in weight before and after the intervention.
The analysis of energy intake and diet composition revealed no significant differences between groups, but the total energy detected in the faeces was higher in adolescents who did not experience significant weight reduction.
According to some sources, these data suggest that the gut microflora influences the development of obesity and energy intake contributes to the body.
The research is a collaboration with research groups in EVASYON project, coordinated by researcher Mark Ascension of Cold-litanic Institute (CSIC), and intended to establish a multidisciplinary educational program (diet, physical activity and psychological profile ) for overweight adolescents and obesity.
This project recently received the NAOS prize awarded by the Ministry of Health and Social Policy.