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Gut microbiota composition correlates with diet and health in the elderly

Nature volume 488, pages 178–184 (2012)Cite this article

Abstract

Alterations in intestinal microbiota composition are associated with several chronic conditions, including obesity and inflammatory diseases. The microbiota of older people displays greater inter-individual variation than that of younger adults. Here we show that the faecal microbiota composition from 178 elderly subjects formed groups, correlating with residence location in the community, day-hospital, rehabilitation or in long-term residential care. However, clustering of subjects by diet separated them by the same residence location and microbiota groupings. The separation of microbiota composition significantly correlated with measures of frailty, co-morbidity, nutritional status, markers of inflammation and with metabolites in faecal water. The individual microbiota of people in long-stay care was significantly less diverse than that of community dwellers. Loss of community-associated microbiota correlated with increased frailty. Collectively, the data support a relationship between diet, microbiota and health status, and indicate a role for diet-driven microbiota alterations in varying rates of health decline upon ageing.

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Figure 1: Microbiota analysis separates elderly subjects based upon where they live in the community.
Figure 2: Dietary patterns in community location correlate with separations based on microbiota composition.
Figure 3: PLS-DA plots of 1 H NMR spectra of faecal water from community, long-stay and rehabilitation subjects.
Figure 4: Transition in microbiota composition across residence location is mirrored by changes in health indices.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Government of Ireland National Development Plan by way of a Department of Agriculture Food and Marine, and Health Research Board FHRI award to the ELDERMET project, as well as by a Science Foundation Ireland award to the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre. M.J.C. is funded by a fellowship from the Health Research Board of Ireland. We thank K. O’Donovan and P. Egan for clinical assistance, staff in Cork City and County hospitals for facilitating subject recruitment, S. Wong and B. Clayton for supercomputer access.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Marcus J. Claesson and Ian B. Jeffery: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology, University College Cork, Ireland

    Marcus J. Claesson, Ian B. Jeffery, Susan E. Power, Eibhlís M. O’Connor, Siobhán Cusack, Hugh M. B. Harris, Gerald F. Fitzgerald, Jennifer Deane, Douwe van Sinderen, Colin Hill & Paul W. O’Toole

  2. Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre, University College Cork, Ireland

    Marcus J. Claesson, Ian B. Jeffery, Eibhlís M. O’Connor, Gerald F. Fitzgerald, Douwe van Sinderen, Catherine Stanton, Fergus Shanahan, Colin Hill, R. Paul Ross & Paul W. O’Toole

  3. Department of Statistics, University College Cork, Ireland

    Susana Conde & Anthony P. Fitzgerald

  4. Teagasc, Moorepark Food Research Centre, Moorepark, Fermoy, Co, Cork, Ireland ,

    Mairead Coakley, Bhuvaneswari Lakshminarayanan, Orla O’Sullivan, Catherine Stanton & R. Paul Ross

  5. Cork University Hospital, Wilton, Cork, Ireland ,

    Michael O’Connor, Norma Harnedy & Denis O’Mahony

  6. St. Finbarr’s Hospital, Douglas Road, Cork, Ireland ,

    Michael O’Connor, Norma Harnedy, Kieran O’Connor & Denis O’Mahony

  7. Mercy University Hospital, Grenville Place, Cork, Ireland ,

    Kieran O’Connor

  8. South Infirmary, Victoria University Hospital, Cork, Ireland

    Kieran O’Connor & Denis O’Mahony

  9. Institute of Food and Health, University College Dublin, Ireland

    Martina Wallace & Lorraine Brennan

  10. School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, Museum Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3AT, UK ,

    Julian R. Marchesi

  11. Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College Cork, Ireland

    Anthony P. Fitzgerald

  12. Department of Medicine, University College Cork, Ireland

    Fergus Shanahan

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Contributions

All authors are members of the ELDERMET consortium (http://eldermet.ucc.ie). P.W.O.T., E.M.O.C., S.Cu.1 and R.P.R. managed the project; D.v.S., G.F.F., C.S., J.R.M., F.S., C.H., R.P.R. and PWOT designed the analyses; M.J.C., I.B.J., S.Co.3, E.M.O.C., H.M.B.H., M.C., B.L., O.O.S., A.P.F., S.E.P., M.W. and L.B. performed the analyses; J.D. performed DNA extraction and PCR; M.W. and L.B. performed NMR metabolomics; M.O.C., N.H., K.O.C. and D.O.M. performed clinical analyses; M.J.C., I.B.J., S.Co.3, E.M.O.C., L.B., J.R.M., A.P.F., R.P.R., C.H., F.S. and P.W.O.T. wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paul W. O’Toole.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Additional information

Amplicon sequence data, shotgun sequence data, contigs, genes and annotations have been deposited inMG-RAST under the Project ID 154 (http://metagenomics.anl.gov/linkin.cgi?project154).

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

This file contains Supplementary Figures 1–17, Supplementary Tables 1–6 and 8–9 (see separate fie for Supplementary Table 7), Supplementary Notes and Supplementary References. (PDF 2839 kb)

Supplementary Table 7

This table contains the clinical and dietary metadata. (XLSX 30 kb)

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Claesson, M., Jeffery, I., Conde, S. et al. Gut microbiota composition correlates with diet and health in the elderly. Nature 488, 178–184 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11319

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