Mixed
An altered enteric microbiome contributes to obesity by enhancing energy harvest from dietary roughage, modulating intestinal physiology to slow transit, and influencing the entero-insular axis and central nervous system to increase appetite and fat storage.
Your gut bacteria play a significant role in how much energy you get from food and how your body stores it. While diet and exercise remain important, understanding that your microbiome influences hunger, fat storage, and nutrient absorption can help explain why weight management is challenging. Strategies like targeted probiotics or dietary changes that support a healthy microbiome may offer additional support alongside traditional lifestyle changes.
This review elucidates multiple mechanisms by which an altered enteric microbiome may contribute to the pathologic condition. Key roles include the microbiome’s ability to process dietary roughage into absorbable nutrients, modulate intestinal physiology, enhance nutrient absorption and influence the endocrine function of adipose tissue and the liver to regulate appetite and hunger.
Why this rating
The paper is a narrative review summarizing multiple studies; it does not present new primary clinical trial data.
Source
Enteric microbiome and obesity: a multidimensional narrative review
Bidisha Barat et al. · Microbial Genomics · 2025
DOI 10.1099/mgen.0.001562
Related findings · Mixed
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