He Yan's team from the Department of Laboratory Medicine of Zhujiang Hospital found that there is an age-dependent correlation between intestinal microbiota aging and metabolic diseases

A number of population studies have found that the intestinal flora is closely related to age, there is a trajectory of change from youth to aging, and a number of animal experiments have also found that transplanting the intestinal flora of elderly animals will have an adverse impact on host metabolism, immunity, nerves, etc.

Recently, the team of He Yan of the Department of Laboratory Medicine of Pearl River Hospital published a paper entitled "Ageing trajectory of the gut microbiota is associated with metabolic diseases in a chronological age-dependent manner" in the authoritative journal Gut Journal in the field of digestion.

This paper first proposes several possible trajectories of intestinal flora age, namely premature microbiota aging, delayed microbiota aging, and intersected microbiota aging (as shown below), then according to previous reports, the intestinal flora of patients with metabolic diseases may have the characteristics of premature aging

Based on the analysis results of about 7,000 people in the Guangdong Gut Microbiome Program, it was found that the microbiota trajectory of metabolic diseases did not appear premature as hypothesized, but showed a state of misalignment: that is, in young people, the microbiota of metabolic diseases was older, but the age trajectory of metabolic diseases was smaller, and then in the middle-aged population (about 50 years old) the two groups of microbiota were staggered, and the trend of metabolic disease flora was younger in the elderly (as shown below).

This study suggests that the conclusion that the younger the intestinal flora, the better" may be worth exploring, especially for the elderly, whether matching the age of the microbiota is more beneficial to metabolic health deserves further study