DECRYPTION – Researchers observe how intestinal bacteria influence energy supply during digestion.
Some biological inequalities are glaring. By eating exactly the same amount of food, some people will gain weight, while others will not gain an extra gram. Why? Danish and Dutch researchers offer an enticing answer in the journal Microbiome: people who gain the most weight seem to have a gut microbiota that extracts more energy from the food they eat. An excess of energy which is then stored by the body in the form of fat. Knowing this, would it be enough to adjust the composition of the trillions of microbes that colonize our intestines to make obese people lose weight?
Transition to clinical stage
“This study seems to give an interesting signal between the composition of the microbiota and weight gain, but you have to be careful because this is only an observational study, which can only show a correlation between these two elements, not a proof of causality”warns François Leulier, director…
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