Gut bacteria from thin people fails to help obese people lose weight in study

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Image: Mark Lennihan/Associated Press

Changing your gut microbes may not help you lose belly fat.

In a preliminary study, obese people got either capsules containing gut microbes from a lean person or placebo pills. Microbes from the lean donor took hold in the guts of the obese recipients. But early results suggest that the bacteria didn’t change the volunteers’ weight or levels of a hormone that helps signal fullness.

People with obesity often have different types of gut microbes than lean people do.

So the researchers reasoned that giving obese people gut microbes from a lean person, known as a fecal or intestinal microbiome transplant, might help overweight people control appetite.

[Researchers] found no change in the satiety protein between the transplant and placebo groups. There was also no indication that the bacteria led to weight loss.

But it’s still too early to determine what role the microbiome plays in obesity. Researchers aren’t yet sure what a healthy microbiome is, for example. Nor do they know or whether the microbes in the colon (those are the ones transferred in this and other fecal microbiome transplants) or those in the small intestine play a bigger role in determining body weight.

Read full, original post: A gut bacteria transplant may not help you lose weight

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