Association of dietary fibre intake and gut microbiota in adults

Increasing evidence indicates that gut microbiota may influence colorectal cancer risk. Diet, particularly fibre intake, may modify gut microbiota composition, which may affect cancer risk. We investigated the relationship between dietary fibre intake and gut microbiota in adults. Using 16S rRNA gene sequencing, we assessed gut microbiota in faecal samples from 151 adults in two independent study populations: National Cancer Institute (NCI), n 75, and New York University (NYU), n 76. We calculated energy-adjusted fibre intake based on FFQ. For each study population with adjustment for age, sex, race, BMI and smoking, we evaluated the relationship between fibre intake and gut microbiota community composition and taxon abundance. Total fibre intake was significantly associated with overall microbial community composition in NYU (P=0·008) but not in NCI (P=0·81). In a meta-analysis of both study populations, higher fibre intake tended to be associated with genera of class Clostridia, including higher abundance of SMB53 (fold change (FC)=1·04, P=0·04), Lachnospira (FC=1·03, P=0·05) and Faecalibacterium (FC=1·03, P=0·06), and lower abundance of Actinomyces (FC=0·95, P=0·002), Odoribacter (FC=0·95, P=0·03) and Oscillospira (FC=0·96, P=0·06). A species-level meta-analysis showed that higher fibre intake was marginally associated with greater abundance of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii (FC=1·03, P=0·07) and lower abundance of Eubacterium dolichum (FC=0·96, P=0·04) and Bacteroides uniformis (FC=0·97, P=0·05). Thus, dietary fibre intake may impact gut microbiota composition, particularly class Clostridia, and may favour putatively beneficial bacteria such as F. prausnitzii. These findings warrant further understanding of diet-microbiota relationships for future development of colorectal cancer prevention strategies.