Department of Animal Science and Technology, Chung-Ang University, Anseong 17546, Republic of Korea.
Research Group of Food Processing, Korea Food Research Institute, Jeonbuk 55365, Republic of Korea; Department of Food Science & Biotechnology, sungshin women's university.
Nutr Res. 2021 Mar;87:31-40. doi: 10.1016/j.nutres.2020.12.013. Epub 2021 Feb 14.
The gut microbiota differs among countries owing to the prevailing diet composition. For the characterization of the gut microbiota of Koreans at different ages in future studies, e.g., in an in vitro human digestion model, we tried to investigate whether the gut microbiota differs between the young and elderly in Korea. Two hundred fecal samples were collected: 100 from elderly people (over 65 years old) at geriatric nursing hospitals and 100 from young people (university students, 20-25 years old) in Gyeonggi province, Korea. The composition of the gut microbiota in these fecal samples was analyzed by next-generation sequencing methods. There were significant differences in the taxonomic composition of the microbiota (the top 10 most abundant taxa) between the young and elderly people in Korea, especially in terms of relative abundance levels of bacteria in phyla Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, Tenericutes, and Fusobacteria (P < 001). The gut microbiota of young people contained higher relative abundance of Lactobacillus than did the microbiota of elderly people, while the microbiota of elderly people manifested higher relative abundance of Escherichia. Even though the sample size may not be large enough for this study to be representative of the entire population of Korea, the study still provides data that are suggestive of differences in the gut microbiota between young and elderly people in Korea. Furthermore, our findings may be applied to develop an improved age-based in vitro model of digestion of Koreans for future research.
由于饮食结构的不同，不同国家的肠道微生物群存在差异。为了在未来的研究中对不同年龄的韩国人肠道微生物群进行特征描述，例如在体外人类消化模型中，我们试图研究韩国年轻人和老年人的肠道微生物群是否存在差异。我们收集了 200 份粪便样本：100 份来自老年人（65 岁以上）护理院，100 份来自韩国京畿道的年轻人（大学生，20-25 岁）。通过下一代测序方法分析这些粪便样本中的肠道微生物群组成。韩国年轻人和老年人的肠道微生物群在分类组成上存在显著差异（前 10 种最丰富的分类群），尤其是在厚壁菌门、变形菌门、无壁菌门和梭杆菌门细菌的相对丰度水平方面（P < 0.01）。年轻人的肠道微生物群中乳杆菌的相对丰度高于老年人，而老年人的肠道微生物群中大肠杆菌的相对丰度较高。尽管这项研究的样本量可能不足以代表韩国的整个人群，但它仍提供了数据，表明韩国年轻人和老年人的肠道微生物群存在差异。此外，我们的研究结果可应用于开发更适合韩国人的基于年龄的体外消化模型，用于未来的研究。
