你的腸道菌型是哪種？

What』s Your Enterotype?

你的腸道菌型是哪種？

原文網址：https://nutritionfacts.org/2018/05/01/whats-your-enterotype/

原文作者：Michael Greger M.D.

The human gut has 「a diverse collection of microorganisms making up some 1,000 species, with each individual presenting with their own unique collection of species.」 But it wasn』t known whether this variation is on a continuum or if people cluster into specific classifiable types until a famous study analyzed the gut flora of people across multiple countries and continents. The researchers identified three so-called enterotypes. It』s pretty amazing that with so many hundreds of types of bacteria that people would settle into just one of three categories. The researchers figured that our guts are like ecosystems, similar to how there area lot of different species of animals on the planet, but they aren』t randomly distributed. You don』t find dolphins in the desert, for example. Instead, in the desert, you find desert species, and, in the jungle, you find jungle species because each ecosystem has different selective pressures, like rainfall or temperature. This study suggested there are three types of colon ecosystemsso you can split humanity into three types: people whose guts grow out a lot of Bacteroides-type bacteria, those whose guts are better homes for Prevotella, and others who foster the growth of Ruminococcus.

人的腸道有「種類豐富的微生物，細分起來有1000來種，每一個人，都有自己獨特的種類構成。」但以前不清楚：這種種類變化是否是連續的，是否可以把人們歸入特定的可分類型。後來，一項著名的試驗分析了多個大陸不同國家人們的腸道菌群。研究者鑒定了3種所謂的腸道菌型。令人咂舌的是，腸道菌有成千上萬種，而人群卻僅僅歸為3類。研究者指出：我們的腸道如同生態系統，類似於地球上有很多種動物，但它們不是隨機分布的。比如說，你不會在沙漠上找到海豚。相反，在沙漠上，你會發現沙漠物種，而在森林中，你會見識到森林物種，因為每個生態系統都有不同的選擇壓力，比如降雨或溫度。該研究表明，人有3種腸道生態系統。因此，可以將人分成3種類型：腸道長出很多擬桿菌的人，腸道是普雷沃菌更好家園的人，以及腸道滋養瘤胃球菌的人。

If you think it』s amazing that researchers were able to boil it down to fit everyone into one of just three groups, subsequent research on a much larger sample of people was able to fold Ruminococcus into Bacteroides, so now everyone seems to fit into one of just two groups. So, now we know, when it comes to gut flora, there are just two types of people in the world: those who grow out mostly Bacteroides and those who overwhelmingly are home to Prevotella species.

如果你認為，研究者能夠簡化到將每一個人歸為僅僅3類中的一類，這已經夠神奇了，那麼，接下來，對大得多樣本的人群開展的後續研究還能將瘤胃球菌類的人群歸入擬桿菌類人群，因此，現在每個人看起來都可以歸入僅僅兩類中的一類，你會怎麼想？如此一來，現在，我們明白，在說到腸道菌群時，世界上只有兩類人：長出來的細菌主要是擬桿菌的人，以及主要是普雷沃菌的人。

The question is why? It doesn』t seem to matter where you live, whether you are male or female, or how old or skinny you are. What matters is what you eat. Researchers looked at more than 100 different food components, and a theme started to arise. Different groupings of bacteria were associated with the presence of a particular food component in the diet.

問題是這樣做的原因何在？看起來，你住在哪裡，你是男是女，或者多大年齡，你有多瘦，這些都不重要。重要的是你吃了什麼。研究者考察了100多種不同食物的成分，於是，話題來了。不同類別的細菌，跟飲食中有特定的食物成分相關。

The study results clearly showed that the components found more in animal foods are associated with the Bacteroides enterotype, while those found almost exclusively in plant foods are associated with Prevotella. So, it is no surprise that another study found that African Americans fell into the Bacteroides enterotype, whereas most of the native Africans were Prevotella. This may matter because the Bacteroides species generally are associated with increased risk of colon cancer, our second leading cause of cancer death, yet a disease almost unheard of among native Africans. The differences in our gut flora may help explain why Americans appear to have more than 50 times the rate of colon cancer.

該研究結果清楚地表明：更多見於動物食品的成分，跟擬桿菌類腸道菌型有關；而幾乎只有植物食品才有的成分，跟普雷沃菌類腸道菌型相關。因此，毫不意外，另一項研究發現：非裔美國人屬於擬桿菌類腸道菌型，而大部分本土非洲人卻是普雷沃菌類腸道菌型。這可能是個關鍵問題，因為擬桿菌類通常伴隨著更高的結腸癌風險，這是我們的第二大癌症死因，而在本土非洲人中，卻幾乎沒人聽說過。人體腸道菌群的差別，或許有助於解釋：何以美國人看起來結腸癌發病率高出50多倍。

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