Scientists claim that your gut microbiome (the trillion-million community of microorganisms in the stomach) can help predict if you have a long, healthy life.
U.S. researchers have identified different signatures in the gut microbiome associated with healthy or unhealthy aging trajectories.
In healthy individuals, intestinal microbiomes become increasingly unique, diverging in different ways specific to the individual, compared to unhealthy individuals.
This uniqueness is strongly associated with microbially produced amino acid derivatives circulating in the bloodstream, suggesting life-prolonging chemicals.
This knowledge means that microbiomes can be used to predict survival in a population of older individuals, according to experts.
The human microbiome is made up of communities of bacteria (and viruses and fungi). Data from more than 9,000 people reveal a different intestinal microbiome signature that is associated with healthy aging and survival in the last decades of life
Researchers say the intestinal microbiome of adults continues to develop at advanced ages in healthy individuals, but not in unhealthy people.
In addition, health-associated microbiome compositions in early or middle age may not be compatible with health in late adulthood.
“Previous results in microbiome aging research appear inconsistent, with some reports showing a decrease in basic intestinal genera in century-old populations, while others show relative stability of the microbiome until the onset of microbiome decreases. health-related aging, ”the study said. author of Dr. Sean Gibbons at the United States Institute of Systems Biology.
“Our work, which is the first to incorporate a detailed analysis of health and survival, can resolve these inconsistencies. Specifically, we show two different aging trajectories.
“One, a decrease in basic microbes and an increase in uniqueness in healthier individuals, consistent with previous results in centenarians living in the community, and two, the maintenance of basic microbes in less healthy individuals.”
Microbiota is also known as microbiome, although the latter term includes the collective genomes of microorganisms in a given environment, as well as the microorganisms themselves.
The intestinal microbiome is an integral component of the body, but its importance in the human aging process has not been clear.
The research team analyzed clinical data and intestinal, phenotypic and microbiome data from more than 9,000 people between the ages of 18 and 101 in three independent cohorts.
The team focused especially on the longitudinal data of a cohort of more than 900 seniors living in the community between the ages of 78 and 98, which allowed them to track health and survival outcomes.
The data showed that intestinal microbiomes became increasingly unique and divergent from other people’s microbiomes as they aged, from middle or late age.
This corresponded to a steady decline in the abundance of basic bacterial genera (e.g., Bacteroides) that tend to be shared among humans.
Although microbiomes became increasingly unique to each individual in healthy aging, the metabolic functions of microbiomes were realizing shared common traits.
The data showed that intestinal microbiomes became increasingly unique (i.e., increasingly divergent from others) as individuals aged, from mid-late adulthood, which corresponded to a constant decline in the abundance of basic bacterial genera (e.g., Bacteroides) that tend to be shared among humans. In the image of the artist, Bacteroides fragilis, one of the main components of the normal microbiome of the human intestine
This signature of intestinal singularity was highly correlated with several metabolites derived from microbes in the blood plasma, including one (tryptophan-derived indole) that has previously been shown to extend the lifespan of mice.
Blood levels of another metabolite, phenylacetylglutamine, showed the strongest association with uniqueness.
Previous work has shown that this metabolite is very high in the blood of people aged 100 years or older.
Interestingly, this pattern of uniqueness appears to begin in middle age (40-50 years) and is associated with a clear metabolic signature of the blood, suggesting that these changes in the microbiome may not only be diagnoses of healthy aging , but they can also contribute directly to health as we age, ”Wilmanski said.
The study was published in the journal Nature Metabolism.