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. 2015 Apr 15;10(4):e0124599.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0124599. eCollection 2015.

Sex, body mass index, and dietary fiber intake influence the human gut microbiome

Christine Dominianni  1 , Rashmi Sinha  2 , James J Goedert  2 , Zhiheng Pei  3 , Liying Yang  4 , Richard B Hayes  5 , Jiyoung Ahn  5
Affiliations

Sex, body mass index, and dietary fiber intake influence the human gut microbiome

Christine Dominianni et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Increasing evidence suggests that the composition of the human gut microbiome is important in the etiology of human diseases; however, the personal factors that influence the gut microbiome composition are poorly characterized. Animal models point to sex hormone-related differentials in microbiome composition. In this study, we investigated the relationship of sex, body mass index (BMI) and dietary fiber intake with the gut microbiome in 82 humans. We sequenced fecal 16S rRNA genes by 454 FLX technology, then clustered and classified the reads to microbial genomes using the QIIME pipeline. Relationships of sex, BMI, and fiber intake with overall gut microbiome composition and specific taxon abundances were assessed by permutational MANOVA and multivariate logistic regression, respectively. We found that sex was associated with the gut microbiome composition overall (p=0.001). The gut microbiome in women was characterized by a lower abundance of Bacteroidetes (p=0.03). BMI (>25 kg/m2 vs. <25 kg/m2) was associated with the gut microbiome composition overall (p=0.05), and this relationship was strong in women (p=0.03) but not in men (p=0.29). Fiber from beans and from fruits and vegetables were associated, respectively, with greater abundance of Actinobacteria (p=0.006 and false discovery rate adjusted q=0.05) and Clostridia (p=0.009 and false discovery rate adjusted q=0.09). Our findings suggest that sex, BMI, and dietary fiber contribute to shaping the gut microbiome in humans. Better understanding of these relationships may have significant implications for gastrointestinal health and disease prevention.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Gut microbiome according to sex.
(A) Unweighted principal coordinate analysis plot of the first two principal coordinates categorized by sex. Ellipses were added to plots using the R package, latticeExtra (R version 2.15.3). (B) Relative abundance of the three major phyla. Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon test was used to test for overall differences using SAS software (version 9.3). Nominal p-values are listed below each phylum.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Gut microbiome according to BMI.
(A) Unweighted principal coordinate analysis plot of the first two principal coordinates categorized by BMI (<25 kg/m2, ≥25 kg/m2). Ellipses were added to plots using the R package, latticeExtra (R version 2.15.3). (B) Relative abundance of the three major phyla. Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon test was used to test for overall differences using SAS software (version 9.3). Nominal p-values are listed below each phylum.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Gut microbiome according to BMI in women and men separately.
Unweighted principal coordinate analysis plot of the first two principal coordinates categorized by BMI (<25 kg/m2, ≥25 kg/m2) in (A) women and (B) men. Ellipses were added to plots using the R package, latticeExtra (R version 2.15.3). Alpha rarefaction plots of Shannon diversity indices grouped by normal weight (<25 kg/m2; open circles) and overweight/obese (≥25 kg/m2; red circles) status for women (C) and for men (D). Statistical significance was assessed by non-parametric Monte Carlo permutations (QIIME). (E) Relative abundance of Firmicures and Bacteroidetes. Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon test was used to test for overall differences using SAS software (version 9.3).
Fig 4
Fig 4. Gut microbiome according to dietary fiber intake.
(A) Unweighted principal coordinate analysis plot of the first two principal coordinates categorized by fruit and vegetable fiber intake (Low: 1.6–11.7 g/day [equivalent to quartile 1–3], High: 11.7–21.9 g/day [quartile 4]). Ellipses were added to plots using the R package, latticeExtra (R version 2.15.3). (B) A heatmap based on unsupervised classification of Spearman correlations between the relative abundance of taxa (genus level) and three dietary fiber sources using the R package, gplots, (R version 2.15.3). For this analysis, only genera that were present in ≥15% of samples were included. Taxa belonging to Clostridia (Cluster 1, *) and Bifidobacteriales (Cluster 2, °) are marked.
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