PhD Defence Kelly M.C. Jardon

Keywords: Obesity, precision nutrition, gut microbiota, insulin resistance 
 

"Precision Nutrition in Cardiometabolic Health: The Role of the Gut Microbiota"

The number of people living with overweight or obesity is still on the rise, which is paired with an increased risk of associated diseases like type 2 diabetes (T2D). Insulin resistance is one of the early markers of T2D, and can develop simultaneously in different organs, but also predominantly in either the liver or muscle. It is important to understand how differences in cardiometabolic disease risk develop, and which biological factors contribute to that. In this thesis, we show differences in the gut microbiota profile between people with liver (LIR) and muscle insulin resistance (MIR) metabolic subtypes. In addition, we showed that people with LIR or MIR benefit more from either of the 2 healthy diets (LIR: a diet high in unsaturated, healthy, fats, MIR: a diet low in fat, but high in protein and fibre). Not only did we show for the first time that precision nutrition based on metabolic phenotype can induce more pronounced, clinically relevant improvements in cardiometabolic health, but we also found phenotype and diet-specific effects on the gut microbiota. This contributes to the advancement in understanding subgroup-based precision health. 

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