Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2023 Nov 8;14(11):787-806.
doi: 10.1093/procel/pwad023.

Nutri-microbiome epidemiology, an emerging field to disentangle the interplay between nutrition and microbiome for human health

Wanglong Gou  1   2   3 , Zelei Miao  1   2   3 , Kui Deng  1   2   3 , Ju-Sheng Zheng  1   2   3
Affiliations
Review

Nutri-microbiome epidemiology, an emerging field to disentangle the interplay between nutrition and microbiome for human health

Wanglong Gou et al. Protein Cell. .

Abstract

Diet and nutrition have a substantial impact on the human microbiome, and interact with the microbiome, especially gut microbiome, to modulate various diseases and health status. Microbiome research has also guided the nutrition field to a more integrative direction, becoming an essential component of the rising area of precision nutrition. In this review, we provide a broad insight into the interplay among diet, nutrition, microbiome, and microbial metabolites for their roles in the human health. Among the microbiome epidemiological studies regarding the associations of diet and nutrition with microbiome and its derived metabolites, we summarize those most reliable findings and highlight evidence for the relationships between diet and disease-associated microbiome and its functional readout. Then, the latest advances of the microbiome-based precision nutrition research and multidisciplinary integration are described. Finally, we discuss several outstanding challenges and opportunities in the field of nutri-microbiome epidemiology.

Keywords: epidemiology; human health; microbiome; nutrition.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Wanglong Gou, Zelei Miao, Kui Deng, and Ju-Sheng Zheng declare that they have no conflict of interest. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by the any of the authors.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Associations of microbiome and microbial metabolites with diet, and human diseases. Nutri-microbiome epidemiology studies identify the associations of microbiome and microbial metabolites with diet, and human diseases. Box colors indicate the direction of association of microbiome with diet (pink, positive; blue, negative). The number of stars indicates the level of evidence for the results. Specifically, one star indicates that the results were from cross-sectional studies. Two stars indicates that the results were from prospective cohort studies, and three stars indicates that the results were from clinical trials or could be replicated in different studies. This figure was created with BioRender.com.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Gut microbiome-based precision nutrition. (A) Host responses to the diet and nutrition are highly variable across individuals. (B) Machine learning integrating the gut microbiome and other host factors could predict the personalized nutritional and dietary response. This figure was created with BioRender.com.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Ang QY, Alexander M, Newman JCet al. Ketogenic diets alter the gut microbiome resulting in decreased intestinal Th17 cells. Cell 2020;181:1263–1275.e16. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Asnicar F, Berry SE, Valdes AMet al. Microbiome connections with host metabolism and habitual diet from 1,098 deeply phenotyped individuals. Nat Med 2021;12:13. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bar N, Korem T, Weissbrod Oet al. A reference map of potential determinants for the human serum metabolome. Nature 2020;588:135–140. - PubMed
    1. Bennet SMP, Böhn L, Störsrud Set al. Multivariate modelling of faecal bacterial profiles of patients with IBS predicts responsiveness to a diet low in FODMAPs. Gut 2018;67:872–881. - PubMed
    1. Ben-Yacov O, Godneva A, Rein Met al. Personalized postprandial glucose response-targeting diet versus Mediterranean diet for glycemic control in prediabetes. Diabetes Care 2021;44:1980–1991. - PubMed

Publication types