A Probiotic Treatment for Obesity?

Scientists have found that two weeks of probiotic bacteria impart resistance to diet-induced obesity and sustained NAPE biosynthesis.

Alterations in the gut microbiota — the microorganisms residing in the gastrointestinal tract — have been implicated in the development of obesity and other chronic diseases.

Sean Davies, Ph.D., and colleagues previously reported a strategy for engineering gut microbiota to produce beneficial compounds that combat obesity. They showed that administration of bacteria engineered to produce NAPEs, a family of bioactive lipids with known anti-obesity properties, inhibited weight gain and other adverse effects of a high-fat diet in mice. In their earlier studies, they pre-treated the mice with antibiotics and administered the engineered bacteria for eight weeks.

Now, they have found that less onerous protocols — no antibiotics and only two weeks of bacteria — still impart resistance to diet-induced obesity and sustained NAPE biosynthesis. In addition, they had success using a human NAPE-producing enzyme.

The findings, reported in Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, support further studies of engineered bacteria that produce beneficial compounds as a treatment strategy for obesity and other chronic diseases.

Reference: “Two-week administration of engineered Escherichia coli establishes persistent resistance to diet-induced obesity even without antibiotic pre-treatment” by Noura S. Dosoky, Zhongyi Chen, Yan Guo, Clara McMillan, C. Robb Flynn and Sean S. Davies, 15 June 2019, Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology.
DOI: 10.1007/s00253-019-09958-x

This research was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health (grants AT007830, DK059637).