RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Blue poo: impact of gut transit time on the gut microbiome using a novel marker
JF Gut
JO Gut
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and British Society of Gastroenterology
SP 1665
OP 1674
DO 10.1136/gutjnl-2020-323877
VO 70
IS 9
A1 Francesco Asnicar
A1 Emily R Leeming
A1 Eirini Dimidi
A1 Mohsen Mazidi
A1 Paul W Franks
A1 Haya Al Khatib
A1 Ana M Valdes
A1 Richard Davies
A1 Elco Bakker
A1 Lucy Francis
A1 Andrew Chan
A1 Rachel Gibson
A1 George Hadjigeorgiou
A1 Jonathan Wolf
A1 Timothy D Spector
A1 Nicola Segata
A1 Sarah E Berry
YR 2021
UL http://gut.bmj.com/content/70/9/1665.abstract
AB Background and aims Gut transit time is a key modulator of host–microbiome interactions, yet this is often overlooked, partly because reliable methods are typically expensive or burdensome. The aim of this single-arm, single-blinded intervention study is to assess (1) the relationship between gut transit time and the human gut microbiome, and (2) the utility of the ‘blue dye’ method as an inexpensive and scalable technique to measure transit time.Methods We assessed interactions between the taxonomic and functional potential profiles of the gut microbiome (profiled via shotgun metagenomic sequencing), gut transit time (measured via the blue dye method), cardiometabolic health and diet in 863 healthy individuals from the PREDICT 1 study.Results We found that gut microbiome taxonomic composition can accurately discriminate between gut transit time classes (0.82 area under the receiver operating characteristic curve) and longer gut transit time is linked with specific microbial species such as Akkermansia muciniphila, Bacteroides spp and Alistipes spp (false discovery rate-adjusted p values <0.01). The blue dye measure of gut transit time had the strongest association with the gut microbiome over typical transit time proxies such as stool consistency and frequency.Conclusions Gut transit time, measured via the blue dye method, is a more informative marker of gut microbiome function than traditional measures of stool consistency and frequency. The blue dye method can be applied in large-scale epidemiological studies to advance diet-microbiome-health research. Clinical trial registry website https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03479866 and trial number NCT03479866.Data are available upon reasonable request. Metagenomes are deposited in EBI ENA under accession number PRJEB39223. The non-metagenomic data used for analysis in this study are held by the Department of Twin Research at King’s College London and access can be requested from https://twinsuk.ac.uk/resources-for-researchers/access-our-data/ to allow for anonymisation and compliance with GDPR standards.