Research

Mixed

High baseline abundance of Bacteroides cellulosilyticus predicts significant weight gain (0.65 kg) in overweight subjects consuming 10.4 g/day of arabinoxylan oligosaccharides (AXOS) for 4 weeks, whereas low abundance predicts weight stability.

If you are overweight and trying to use high-fiber wheat bran supplements (like AXOS) to manage weight, your gut bacteria matter. If you have high levels of Bacteroides cellulosilyticus, you might stay stable. If you have low levels, you might actually gain weight. Standard 'eat more fiber' advice may need personalization based on gut health testing.

ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
Among the Bacteroides species, B. cellulosilyticus relative abundance exhibited the highest positive rank correlation (Kendall’s tau = 0.51, FDR p = .070) with 4-week weight change on AXOS... the low P/B group gained 0.65 kg (95% CI: 0.16; 1.14, p = .009).
Lars Christensen et al. · Gut Microbes · 2020

Why this rating

Randomized controlled trial design but small sample size (n=15 for the AXOS subgroup) and post-hoc analysis.

Source

Microbial enterotypes beyond genus level: <i>Bacteroides</i> species as a predictive biomarker for weight change upon controlled intervention with arabinoxylan oligosaccharides in overweight subjects

Lars Christensen et al. · Gut Microbes · 2020

DOI 10.1080/19490976.2020.1847627

crossover · n=29Cited 53×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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