Human Health & Nutritional Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada.
National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD.
J Nutr. 2019 Nov 1;149(11):1882-1895. doi: 10.1093/jn/nxz154.
On December 17, 2018, the North American branch of the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI North America) convened a workshop "Can We Begin to Define a Healthy Gut Microbiome Through Quantifiable Characteristics?" with >40 invited academic, government, and industry experts in Washington, DC. The workshop objectives were to 1) develop a collective expert assessment of the state of the evidence on the human gut microbiome and associated human health benefits, 2) see if there was sufficient evidence to establish measurable gut microbiome characteristics that could serve as indicators of "health," 3) identify short- and long-term research needs to fully characterize healthy gut microbiome-host relationships, and 4) publish the findings. Conclusions were as follows: 1) mechanistic links of specific changes in gut microbiome structure with function or markers of human health are not yet established; 2) it is not established if dysbiosis is a cause, consequence, or both of changes in human gut epithelial function and disease; 3) microbiome communities are highly individualized, show a high degree of interindividual variation to perturbation, and tend to be stable over years; 4) the complexity of microbiome-host interactions requires a comprehensive, multidisciplinary research agenda to elucidate relationships between gut microbiome and host health; 5) biomarkers and/or surrogate indicators of host function and pathogenic processes based on the microbiome need to be determined and validated, along with normal ranges, using approaches similar to those used to establish biomarkers and/or surrogate indicators based on host metabolic phenotypes; 6) future studies measuring responses to an exposure or intervention need to combine validated microbiome-related biomarkers and/or surrogate indicators with multiomics characterization of the microbiome; and 7) because static genetic sampling misses important short- and long-term microbiome-related dynamic changes to host health, future studies must be powered to account for inter- and intraindividual variation and should use repeated measures within individuals.
2018 年 12 月 17 日，国际生命科学学会（北美分会）（ILSI North America）在华盛顿特区召集了一次题为“我们是否可以通过可量化的特征开始定义健康的肠道微生物组？”的研讨会，邀请了 40 多名学术、政府和行业专家参加。研讨会的目标是：1）对人类肠道微生物组及其与人类健康益处相关的证据状况进行集体专家评估；2）评估是否有足够的证据来确定可作为“健康”指标的可测量肠道微生物组特征；3）确定短期和长期的研究需求，以充分描述健康的肠道微生物组-宿主关系；4）发表研究结果。会议得出以下结论：1）特定肠道微生物组结构变化与功能或人类健康标志物之间的机制联系尚未建立；2）肠道上皮功能和疾病变化的失调是原因、结果还是两者兼而有之尚不清楚；3）微生物组群落高度个体化，对扰动的个体间变异性很大，并且多年来趋于稳定；4）微生物组-宿主相互作用的复杂性需要一个全面的、多学科的研究计划，以阐明肠道微生物组与宿主健康之间的关系；5）需要根据微生物组确定并验证宿主功能和致病过程的生物标志物和/或替代指标及其正常范围，方法类似于基于宿主代谢表型建立生物标志物和/或替代指标的方法；6）未来测量对暴露或干预的反应的研究需要将经过验证的与微生物组相关的生物标志物和/或替代指标与微生物组的多组学特征相结合；7）由于静态遗传采样会错过对宿主健康的重要短期和长期微生物组相关动态变化，因此未来的研究必须有能力解释个体内和个体间的变异，并应在个体内使用重复测量。
