Peer-reviewed article
Children's gut microbiota predicts the efficacy of obesity treatment.
Mireia Alcázar, Verónica Luque, Natalia Ferré, Judit Muñoz-Hernando, Mariona Gispert-Llauradó et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined whether children's gut bacteria composition at the start of treatment can predict how well they will respond to obesity interventions. Researchers measured 41 children aged 8-14 with obesity and analyzed their gut bacteria before and after a one-year intervention. Children with higher baseline gut bacteria diversity and greater amounts of specific bacteria (particularly Faecalibacterium) showed better improvements in weight and metabolic health markers. The findings suggest that testing a child's gut bacteria could help personalize obesity treatment approaches.
Key points
- Higher baseline Shannon and Simpson diversity indices were associated with greater improvements in metabolic risk score
- Faecalibacterium was the most influential bacterial feature, with a Random Forest model achieving 87.6% accuracy (AUC) for predicting metabolic score improvement
- Children with Simpson index above 0.849 (high-diversity group) showed significantly better improvements in metabolic risk score, systolic blood pressure, and HDL-cholesterol
- Eighty-four bacterial features differed between children who improved and those who did not
- Microbiota profiling could potentially guide personalized treatment strategies for childhood obesity
Limitations
The study included only 41 children and was observational in nature, so causality cannot be established. The document does not describe the specific intervention content or whether results are generalizable to different populations or intervention types.
Abstract
BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE: Responses to dietary interventions may vary depending on baseline gut microbiota composition. This study aimed to determine whether baseline gut microbiota diversity and composition predict the effectiveness of childhood obesity interventions. METHODS: Anthropometry, triglycerides, HDL-cholesterol, HOMA-IR, and systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP, DBP) were evaluated and standardised in 41 children with obesity (8-14yrs). Faecal samples were collected at baseline and after one year. Intervention success was defined by improvements in metabolic risk score (MetScore) or BMI z-score. Associations between baseline microbiota features (diversity and composition) and intervention success were evaluated using Spearman's correlation and linear regression models. Gut microbiota composition and differential abundance were analyzed using ANCOM-BC2. Exploratory biomarker discovery was analyzed using LEfSe, and predictive modelling using a Random Forest (RF) classifier. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was used to determine a Simpson index cut-off. RESULTS: Higher baseline Shannon and Simpson indices, and greater abundances of Faecalibacterium and Eubacterium coprostanoligenes group, were associated with greater improvements in MetScore. Faecalibacterium was the most influential feature with the highest importance in the RF model, which achieved an AUC of 0.876 for MetScore and 0.873 for BMI z-score improvement. Eighty-four features differed between MetScore response groups (FDR < 0.05) with some genus-level overlap with the exploratory analysis, including Eubacterium coprostanoligenes and Ruminococcus. A Simpson index cut-off of 0.849 stratified participants high- and low-diversity groups; children above this threshold exhibited greater improvements in MetScore (p = 0.028), SBP (p = 0.043), and in HDL-cholesterol (p = 0.028). CONCLUSION: Higher baseline gut microbiota diversity and specific microbial signatures, particularly Faecalibacterium abundance, predicted better outcomes in childhood obesity interventions. These findings support the potential use of microbiota profiling to guide personalised treatment strategies. Further research is needed to optimise interventions.Trial registration: clinicaltrials.gov NCT03749291.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- One-year dietary or lifestyle intervention for obesity (specific content not detailed)
- Population
- 41 children aged 8-14 years with obesity
Key finding
Higher baseline Shannon and Simpson diversity indices predicted greater improvements in metabolic risk score
Alcázar et al. · PubMed (US National Library of Medicine) · 19 Feb 2026