Coffee Consumption Linked to Specific Gut Bacterium

TOPLINE:

Coffee consumption is associated with the abundance of the gut bacterium Lawsonibacter asaccharolyticus, suggesting that specific foods can affect the intestinal microbiome.

METHODOLOGY:

• The researchers selected coffee as a model to investigate the interplay between specific foods and the intestinal microbial community.
• They conducted a multicohort, multiomic analysis of US and UK populations with detailed dietary information from 22,867 participants, which they then integrated with public data from 211 cohorts comprising 54,198 participants.
• They conducted various in vitro experiments to expand and validate their findings, including adding coffee to media containing the L asaccharolyticus species that had been isolated from human feces.

TAKEAWAY:

• L asaccharolyticus is highly prevalent, with about fourfold higher average abundance in coffee drinkers, and its growth is stimulated in vitro by coffee supplementation.
• The link between coffee consumption and the microbiome was highly reproducible across different populations (area under the curve, 0.89), driven largely by the presence and abundance of L asaccharolyticus.
• Similar associations were found in analyses of data from 25 countries. The prevalence of the bacterium was high in European countries with high per capita coffee consumption, such as Luxembourg, Denmark, and Sweden, and very low in countries with low per capita coffee consumption, such as China, Argentina, and India.
• Plasma metabolomics on 438 samples identified several metabolites enriched among coffee drinkers, with quinic acid and its potential derivatives associated with both coffee and L asaccharolyticus.

IN PRACTICE:

“Our study provides insights into how the gut microbiome potentially mediates the chemistry — and thus health benefits — of coffee,” the study authors wrote. “The microbial mechanisms underlying the metabolism of coffee are a step towards mapping the role of specific foods on the gut microbiome, and similar patterns of microorganism–food interactions for other dietary elements should be sought with systematic epidemiologic and metagenomic investigations.”

SOURCE:

Paolo Manghi, PhD, University of Trento, Trento, Italy, led the study, which was published online in Nature Microbiology.

LIMITATIONS:

The authors relied on food questionnaires to assess coffee intake. The study is observational, and the clinical implications are unknown.

DISCLOSURES:

This work was supported by ZOE, a biotech company, and TwinsUK, an adult twin registry funded by the Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council, Versus Arthritis, European Union Horizon 2020, Chronic Disease Research Foundation, the National Institute for Health and Care Research — Clinical Research Network and Biomedical Research Centre based at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in partnership with King’s College London. Manghi had no competing interests. Segata is a consultant for and receives options from ZOE. Several other coauthors reported financial relationships with ZOE, and three are cofounders of the company.