The level of diversity of the good bacteria; in our digestive systems has been found to be linked to a feature of cardiovascular disease (hardening of the arteries) in new research by experts at the University of Nottingham and King’s College London.
Now for the first time, researchers have found a link between gut bacteria and arterial stiffening which suggests that targeting the microbiome through diet, medication and probiotics may be a way to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. The British Heart Foundation and MRC-funded research has been published in the ‘European Heart Journal’. The researchers examined medical data from a group of 617 middle-aged female twins from the TwinsUK registry. Measurements of arterial stiffening using a gold-standard measure called carotid-femoral pulse-wave velocity (PWV) were analysed alongside data on the composition of the gut microbiomes of the women.
The results of the analysis revealed that there was a significant correlation in all the women between the diversity of the microbes in the gut and the health of the arteries. After adjusting for metabolic variations and blood pressure, the measure of arterial stiffness was higher in women with lower diversity of healthy bacteria in the gut. The research also identified specific microbes which were linked to a lower risk of arterial stiffening.
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