Kotzampassi Katerina, Giamarellos-Bourboulis Evangelos J, Stavrou George
Department of Surgery, Medical School, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki 54006, Greece.
Fourth Department of Internal Medicine, University of Athens Medical School, Athens 12462, Greece.
ISRN Obes. 2014 Mar 6;2014:651895. doi: 10.1155/2014/651895. eCollection 2014.
Obesity is a major public health concern, caused by a combination of increased consumption of energy-dense foods and reduced physical activity, with contributions from host genetics, environment, and adipose tissue inflammation. In recent years, the gut microbiome has also been found to be implicated and augmented research in mice and humans have attributed to it both the manifestation and/or exacerbation of this major epidemic and vice versa. At the experimental level, analysis of fecal samples revealed a potential link between obesity and alterations in the gut flora (drop in Bacteroidetes and increase in Firmicutes), the specific gut microbiome being associated with the obese phenotype. Conventionally raised mice were found to have over 40% more total body fat compared with those raised under germ-free conditions, while conventionalization of germ-free mice resulted in a significant increase in total body fat. Similarly, the sparse data in humans supports the fact that fat storage is favoured by the presence of the gut microbiota, through a multifaceted mechanism. Efforts to identify new therapeutic strategies to modulate gut microbiota would be of high priority for public health, and to date, probiotics and/or prebiotics seem to be the most effective tools.
肥胖是一个主要的公共卫生问题，它由能量密集型食物消费增加和身体活动减少共同引起，同时宿主基因、环境和脂肪组织炎症也有一定作用。近年来，肠道微生物群也被发现与之有关，对小鼠和人类的更多研究表明，它与这一重大流行病的表现和/或加剧都有关系，反之亦然。在实验层面，对粪便样本的分析揭示了肥胖与肠道菌群变化（拟杆菌减少和厚壁菌增加）之间的潜在联系，特定的肠道微生物群与肥胖表型相关。研究发现，与在无菌条件下饲养的小鼠相比，传统饲养的小鼠体脂总量多40%以上，而无菌小鼠常规化饲养后，体脂总量显著增加。同样，人类方面的少量数据也支持这样一个事实，即肠道微生物群的存在通过多方面机制有利于脂肪储存。确定调节肠道微生物群的新治疗策略对公共卫生至关重要，迄今为止，益生菌和/或益生元似乎是最有效的工具。
