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Study of the diversity and short-chain fatty acids production by the bacterial community in overweight and obese Mexican children

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Abstract

Obesity and overweight are health problems of multifactorial etiology, which may include changes in the microbiome. In Mexico, more than 30 % of the child population between 5 and 11 years of age suffer from being overweight or are obese, which makes it a public health issue in progress. The purpose of this work was to measure the short-chain fatty acid concentration by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and to characterize the bacterial diversity by ion torrent semiconductor sequencing, of 16S rDNA libraries prepared from stools collected from a sample of well-characterized Mexican children for normal weight, overweight, and obese conditions by anthropometric and biochemical criteria. We found that triglyceride levels are increased in overweight and obese children, who presented altered propionic and butyric acid concentrations in feces. In addition, although the colon microbiota did not show a clear bacterial dysbiosis among the three conditions, the abundance of some particular bacteria was changed with respect to normal controls. We conclude from our results that the imbalance in the abundance of at least nine different bacteria as well as altered short-chain fatty acid concentration in feces is associated to the overweight and obese conditions of Mexican children.

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Abbreviations

SCFAs:

Short-chain fatty acids

NGS:

Next-generation sequencing

nt:

Nucleotides

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Cinvestav-IPN, Estimulos a Investigaciones Médicas, Fundación Miguel Alemán A. C., and FONSEC SS/IMSS/ISSSTE-CONACYT-233361 granted to JGM. We thank Mario Arturo Cruz Montiel, Angel Antonio Martínez Gomez, Jakeline Leon Bernal, Jessica Jazmín Bárcenas García, and Rodrigo García Gutiérrez for technical assistance in the laboratory; Antonia López Salazar for administrative assistance; Suresh Thenozhi for technical assistance in bioinformatics analysis; and Caterina R. Venturelli as well as Sathish Kumar Kamaraj for the careful reading and correction of this text. The authors are deeply indebted to all parents and children who participated in this study.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval

The authors declare that all procedures were performed in accordance with the ethical standards approved by the Local Ethical Committee Board of Health from the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social R-2011–1402 1402–10, Mexico City, and with the Helsinki Declaration revised in 2000.

Informed consent

The authors declare that informed consent was signed by all parents and children in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration revised in 2000.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Genética y Biología Molecular, Cinvestav-IPN Unidad Zacatenco, México, DF, 07360, Mexico

    S. Murugesan, M. Ulloa-Martínez, A. Piña-Escobedo & J. García-Mena

  2. Departamento de Farmacología, Cinvestav-IPN, México, DF, Mexico

    S. Murugesan, F. M. Galván-Rodríguez & C. Hoyo-Vadillo

  3. Departamento de Nutrición, Instituto Nacional de Perinatología, México, DF, Mexico

    M. L. Pizano-Zárate

  4. Escuela Superior de Medicina del Instituto Politécnico Nacional, México, DF, Mexico

    H. Martínez-Rojano

  5. Departamento de Fisiología Biofísica y Neurociencias, Cinvestav-IPN, México, DF, Mexico

    C. Miranda-Brito & M. C. Romano

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  1. S. Murugesan
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  2. M. Ulloa-Martínez
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Correspondence to J. García-Mena.

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Murugesan, S., Ulloa-Martínez, M., Martínez-Rojano, H. et al. Study of the diversity and short-chain fatty acids production by the bacterial community in overweight and obese Mexican children. Eur J Clin Microbiol Infect Dis 34, 1337–1346 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10096-015-2355-4

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