Tien Dong, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor, Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Division of Digestive Diseases, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Financial Disclosure: None
Alterations in brain-gut-microbiome interactions have been implicated as an important factor in obesity. We aimed to explore the relationship between food addiction (FA) and the brain-gut-microbiome axis using a multi’omics approach involving microbiome data, metabolomics, and brain imaging. Brain MRI was obtained in 105 females. FA was defined using the Yale Food Addiction Scale. Fecal samples were collected for sequencing and metabolomics. Statistical analysis was done using multivariate analyses and machine learning algorithms. Of the females with obesity, 33.3% exhibited FA as compared to 5.3% and 0.0% of overweight and normal BMI females, respectively (p=0.0001). Based on a multilevel sparse partial least square discriminant analysis, there was a difference in the gut microbiome of females with FA versus those without. Differential abundance testing showed Bacteroides, Megamonas, Eubacterium and Akkermansia were statistically associated with FA (q-value<0.05). Metabolomics showed that indolepropionic acid was inversely correlated to FA. FA was also correlated with increased connectivity within the brain’s reward network, specifically between the intraparietal sulcus, brain stem and putamen. This study examined the role of the brain-gut-microbiome axis in food addiction and it supports the idea of targeting the brain-gut-microbiome axis for the treatment of FA and obesity.