Researchers at the University of Auckland's Liggins Institute have been looking at what happens when gut bacteria from healthy teenagers is introduced, in capsule form, to severely overweight teens' digestive systems.
They've been trying to establish if it triggers more effective metabolisation of food, resulting in weight loss and associated health benefits.
Paediatric Endocronologist Professor Wayne Cutfield joined Nine to Noon to reveal the results of a world's first gut bugs trial.
Beneficial Gut Bacteria Photo: Flickr
Cutfield tells Kathryn Ryan they whittled down a group of healthy teenagers to eight people who donated their gut bacteria via capsules to other, obese, teenagers.
“What we wanted to see, and what he hoped to see, was major weight loss because there had been studies done in mice that showed that if you take the gut bugs from a lean mouse and put them in a fat mouse, the fat mouse will lose 20 percent of its body weight.
“We wanted to know if we could achieve the same results in humans.”
He says they gave the gut bugs to the obese teenagers and asked them to eat a healthy diet, without regulating it or fixing it themselves.
“The reason we didn’t do that was because we’d be changing two things at once and then the question would be, what could produce the positive outcome, if there was one, was it the gut bugs or the diet.”
They found that while the obese teenagers didn’t lose weight, the health complications caused by their obesity were far reduced.
“In 80 percent of the treated teens, the metabolic syndrome all but disappeared.”
Cutfield says that, in essence, they’re healthier obese individuals for having the gut bugs introduced.
“The implications are that, if we can do this on a bigger scale, that might turn out to be an effective treatment for metabolic syndrome.”
He says most of the obese teens continued to eat unhealthy diets but at least two of them decided to eat healthier and they lost between 12-16kg over several months.
“The question there is, for the gut bacteria to be effective, do you need a diet as well.”
