Associate Professor
University of Copenhagen
During the past several decades, numerous trials have compared various diets for the management of overweight and obesity, assuming that a single dietary strategy would be appropriate for all individuals. These studies have failed to provide strong evidence for the efficacy of any particular diet, and it is likely that different people will have different levels of success on different diets. Being able to match a person to an appropriate diet for weight management based on biomarkers would be a great leap forward for our field.
Here, I review enterotypes in a nutritional context and discuss how enterotype stratification may be used in personalized nutrition in obesity management. Enterotypes are characterized by distinct digestive functions with preference for specific dietary substrate, resulting in short-chain fatty acids that may influence energy balance in the host. Consequently, the enterotype potentially affects the individual’s ability to lose weight when following a specific diet. In short, a high-fiber diet seems to optimize weight loss among Prevotella-enterotype subjects but not among Bacteroides enterotype subjects. Thus, enterotypes, as a pretreatment gut microbiota biomarker, have the potential to become an important tool in personalized nutrition and obesity management, although further interventions assessing their applicability are warranted.
Classical randomized controlled trials (RCT) are not optimal to for testing of personalized nutrition. Therefore, I will present a novel statistical approach to be used for personalized nutrition when reanalyzing previously conducted RCT and for the primary outcome and power calculation when designing new studies.
Finally, I will guide how current health professionals can apply this information available to date.
Saturday, June 8
8:30 AM – 11:00 AM
Saturday, June 8
8:35 AM – 9:05 AM