July 29, 2021

expert reaction to a study looking at microbiota composition and longevity

A study published in Nature looks at gut microbe composition of centenarians (aged over 100 years old), elderly individuals, and younger people in Japan.

Prof Kim Barrett, Distinguished Professor of Medicine, UC San Diego, said:

“This work seems timely, interesting and important, and to have been carefully conducted.  Like many studies that seek to implicate specific microbiome signatures with particular conditions in humans, as yet the work mostly reveals correlations rather than causality. On the other hand, bile acids are emerging as a new class of “enterohormones” beyond their classic role in fat digestion and absorption.  It is certainly conceivable that manipulating concentrations of specific bile acids, whether microbially or by giving them directly, could exert health benefits.”

‘Novel bile acid biosynthetic pathways are enriched in the microbiome of centenarians’ by Yuko Sato et al. was published in Nature at 16:00 UK time on Thursday 29^th July 2021. 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03832-5

Declared interests

None received.