The gut microbiota of Colombians differs from that of Americans, Europeans and AsiansOriginal paper
Karen Pendergrass is a microbiome researcher specializing in microbiome-targeted interventions (MBTIs). She systematically analyzes scientific literature to identify microbial patterns, develop hypotheses, and validate interventions. As the founder of the Microbiome Signatures Database, she bridges microbiome research with clinical practice. In 2012, based on her own investigative research, she became the first documented case of FMT for Celiac Disease, four years before the first published case study.
Read MoreWhat was studied?
Researchers characterized the gut microbiota of 30 apparently healthy Colombian adults from Medellin using 16S rRNA pyrosequencing. They compared this new dataset against existing American, European, Japanese, and South Korean cohorts (126 subjects total) to test whether geography or body mass index better explains microbiota differences.
How was it studied?
Stool DNA underwent 454 pyrosequencing of the V1 to V3 16S rDNA regions, with taxonomy assigned via the Greengenes database in QIIME. UniFrac beta-diversity analyses and linear regressions tested effects of population, BMI, age, and gender on bacterial composition.
What did they find?
Colombian gut microbiota was dominated by Firmicutes (79 percent average) and Bacteroidetes (17 percent), and differed significantly from American, European, and Asian samples (ANOSIM R = 0.78, p = 0.001). Geographic origin explained more variance than BMI or gender. Firmicutes abundance decreased with increasing BMI in Colombians and Americans, while Bacteroidetes showed no change. Five fiber-degrading genera, Akkermansia, Dialister, Oscillospira, an unclassified Ruminococcaceae, and an unclassified Clostridiales, were less abundant in obese Colombian subjects.
Why it matters
The findings suggest population geography and diet, not just obesity status, are major drivers of gut microbiota variation, a factor prior American and European-centric studies could not capture. This implies obesity-microbiome intervention strategies should account for population-specific baseline compositions.