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The microbes in our gut, the bacteria, viruses and microbes that live in our gut, play an important role in our health and disease risk in ways that are just starting to be recognized, according to Russia Today.
And researchers and collaborators at the University of California, San Diego recently showed in older men that the composition of a person’s gut microbiome is linked to levels of active vitamin D, a hormone important for bone health and immunity. .
The study, published November 26, 2020 in the journal Nature Communications, revealed a new understanding of vitamin D and how it is usually measured.
Vitamin D can take many different forms, but standard blood tests reveal only one, an inactive substance that the body can store. To use vitamin D, the body must metabolize the precursor into an active form.
“We were surprised that microbiome diversity (the various types of bacteria in a person’s gut) is closely related to active vitamin D, but not to the precursor form. Greater gut microbiome diversity is believed to be associated with better health, “said senior researcher Deborah Cadeau, director of the Osteoporosis Clinic at the University of California. Public”.
Cadeau led the National Institute on Aging – funded by osteoporosis fractures in men (MrOS), a large study that began in 2000. He collaborated with Rob Knight, professor and director of the Center for Microbiome Innovation at the University of California, San Diego, along with co-authors Robert L. Thomas is a member of the Department of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, and Serene Ling Jiang is a graduate student in the biostatistics program at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and the Sciences of Human Longevity.
Several studies have indicated that people with low vitamin D levels are more likely to develop cancer, heart disease, worse Covid-19 infection, and other diseases. However, the largest randomized clinical trial to date, with over 25,000 adults, concluded that taking vitamin D supplements had no effect on health outcomes, including heart disease, cancer, or even the health of women. bones.
“Our study suggests that the reason for this is that these studies only measure the elemental form of vitamin D, not the active hormone,” said Cadeau, who is also a professor at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Herbert Wertheim College of Public Health. Its breakdown is a better indicator of underlying health problems and may respond better to vitamin D supplementation. “
The team analyzed stool and blood samples provided by 567 participating men living in 6 U.S. cities, with an average age of 84, and most of them reported being in good or excellent health.
The researchers used a technique called 16s rRNA sequencing to identify and quantify the types of bacteria in each stool sample based on unique genetic identifiers. They used a method known as LC-MSMS to determine the vitamin D metabolites (precursor, active hormone, and lysis product) in each participant’s blood serum.
In addition to discovering a link between active vitamin D and overall microbiome diversity, the researchers also noted that 12 specific types of bacteria appeared more often in the gut microbiomes of men who had a lot of active vitamin D, a beneficial fatty acid that helps to maintain the health of the intestinal lining.
“Gut microbes are really complex and differ a lot from person to person. When we find associations, they usually aren’t as distinct as we’ve found here,” Jiang said.
Because they live in different regions of the United States, the men in the study are exposed to varying amounts of sunlight, which is a source of vitamin D and most of the vitamin D precursors.
But the team unexpectedly found no correlation between where the men lived and their levels of the active vitamin D hormone.
“It seems like it doesn’t matter how much vitamin D you take in through sunlight or supplements, or how much your body can store. It matters how well your body can metabolize it into active vitamin D, and this is probably what clinical trials need. “Cadeau said. They need to be measured to get a more accurate picture of the vitamin’s role in health.”
Thomas added: “In medicine we often find that more is not necessarily better. So, in this case, it may not be related to the amount of vitamin D you take, but to how you encourage your body to use it.”
Cadeau pointed out that the study was based on a single timely injection of microbes and vitamin D into the participants’ blood and stool, and these factors can vary over time depending on the person’s environment, diet, sleep habits, drugs and more. According to the team, more studies are needed to better understand the role of bacteria in vitamin D metabolism and to determine whether a microbiome-level intervention could be used to augment current treatments to improve bone and possibly other health outcomes.
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