The recent study of the Norwegian researchers from the Oslo University Hospital compared gut microbiota of two independent groups of heart failure patients, ScienceNordic reported. The results showed a strong link between the gut bacteria flora and chronic heart failure.
The heart failure patients who were divided into two independent groups became the member of an experiment. The microbial flora of both were compared with analyses of the intestinal flora with comparable groups of healthy persons. The study has found that chronic heart failure patients lack important microbiota in their intestinal tracts.
According to Marius Trøseid, a leading author, there is one special signal that is seen in both groups of heart patients:
“They have a narrower variety of microbes in their intestines. We identified 15 groups of bacteria that are different between healthy and afflicted persons, and most of these groups are lacking in the heart failure patients,”
the researcher added.
Moreover, most of the 15 bacteria groups have something else in common: bacteria produce the butyric acid, a short chain fatty acid that the body really needs.
“It is a major source of nutrients for the cells lining the colon,”
explains Marius Trøseid and adds that butyrate has a direct effect on the intestines as a suppressor of colonic inflammations. Thus, researchers have found another clue, which led to the conclusion. A link between levels of butyrate-producing bacteria lies in the gut and levels of inflammation substances in the bloodstream. Earlier studies have found that such inflammations can play a role in heart failure but there was no detailed info about the butyrate compound.
It’s conceivable that a lack of butyrate leads to inflammations in the intestines of chronic heart failure patients because its healthy effect is absent.
It is also possible that colonic cells begin to work less effectively, thus weakening the barrier between gut contents and the rest of the body. This enables substances from the gut to leak into the bloodstream and trigger an immune response in the entire body. According to the cardiological researcher Helge Røsjø at the University of Oslo.
“Gut flora can be significant for the development of heart diseases,”
he writes in an email to ScienceNordic’s Norwegian partner forskning.no and added he is intrigued by the results.
