Gut microbiota-targeted dietary intervention has emerged as a promising strategy to ameliorate the metabolic disorder associated with obesity. In this study the potential efficacy of three diets with different carbohydrate sources was investigated for improving obesity-related metabolic disorders by modifying the gut microbiota of high-fat diet (HFD) induced obese mice. The obese mice received a 7-week dietary intervention respectively fed with the corn starch (CS), potato starch (PS), or wheat starch (WS) diet. The PS diet significantly reduced the body weight, fat mass, as well as the serum total cholesterol, triglyceride, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and free fatty acids (FFAs). Moreover, the PS diet improved insulin sensitivity, decreased serum lipopolysaccharide-binding protein (LBP) concentration and downregulated Leptin the mRNA expression in adipose tissue. Additionally, 16S rRNA gene V3-V4 region sequencing revealed that the short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs)-producing bacteria were selectively enriched in the PS group. Bacteria responding to the three diets were clustered into 23 co-abundance groups (CAGs), where the CAGs 5, 7 and 14 were enriched in the PS group exhibiting correlations with the metabolic improvements. This study demonstrates that gut microbiota modulated by potato starch may contributes to the relief of obesity-induced metabolic symptoms.
Liu et al. (2026) studied this question.