Washington : Promoting healthy gut microbiota, the bacteria that live in the intestine, can help treat or prevent metabolic syndrome, scientists have found, reports PTI.
A person with metabolic syndrome is twice as likely to develop heart disease and five times as likely to develop diabetes. Researchers at Georgia State University and Cornell University did a follow-up on their previous research published in journal Science, using an improved technical approach to make the results more significant.
In the previous study, researchers showed altered gut microbiota plays a role in promoting metabolic syndrome. Gut microbiota performs key functions in health and when it becomes dysregulated it can promote chronic inflammatory diseases such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
In addition, altered gut microbiota promotes inflammation that leads to metabolic syndrome. “We’ve filled in a lot of the details about how it works,” said Dr Andrew Gewirtz, a professor in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State.
“It’s the loss of TLR5 on the epithelium, the cells that line the surface of the intestine and their ability to quickly respond to bacteria. That ability goes away and results in a more aggressive bacterial population that gets closer in and produces substances that drive inflammation.”
