WASHINGTON — Different kinds of bacteria that live inside the gut can help spur obesity or protect against it, say scientists at Washington University in St. Louis who transplanted intestinal germs from fat or lean people into mice and watched the rodents change.
And what they ate determined whether the good germs could move in and do their job.
The research raises the possibility of one day turning gut bacteria into personalized fat-fighting therapies, and it might help explain why some people have a harder time losing weight than others do.
“It’s an important player,” said Dr. David Relman of Stanford University, who wasn’t involved in the new research. “This paper says that diet and microbes are necessary companions in all of this. They literally and figuratively feed each other.”
The research was reported in the journal Science.
