The human gut and dietary salt: The Bacteroides/Prevotella ratio as a potential marker of sodium intake and beyond

Fagunwa, Omololu, Davies, Kirsty and Bradbury, Jane (2024) The human gut and dietary salt: The Bacteroides/Prevotella ratio as a potential marker of sodium intake and beyond. Nutrients, 16 (7). ISSN 2072-6643

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Abstract

The gut microbiota is a dynamic ecosystem that plays a pivotal role in maintaining host health. The perturbation of these microbes has been linked to several health conditions. Hence, they have emerged as promising targets for understanding and promoting good health. Despite the growing body of research on the role of sodium in health, its effects on the human gut microbiome remain under-explored. Here, using nutrition and metagenomics methods, we investigate the influence of dietary sodium intake and alterations of the human gut microbiota. We found that a high-sodium diet (HSD) altered the gut microbiota composition with a significant reduction in Bacteroides and inverse increase in Prevotella compared to a low-sodium diet (LSD). However, there is no clear distinction in the Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes (F/B) ratio between the two diet types. Metabolic pathway reconstruction revealed the presence of sodium reabsorption genes in the HSD, but not LSD. Since it is currently difficult in microbiome studies to confidently associate the F/B ratio with what is considered healthy (e.g., low sodium) or unhealthy (e.g., high sodium), we suggest that the use of a genus-based ratio such as the Bacteroides/Prevotella (B/P) ratio may be more beneficial for the application of microbiome studies in health.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data Availability Statement: The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary Material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	bacteroides,cholesterol,enac,gut,microbial ratios,microbiome,prevotella,sodium intake,tspo,food science,nutrition and dietetics,sdg 3 - good health and well-being ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1100/1106
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Norwich Medical School
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	15 Dec 2025 15:30
Last Modified:	15 Dec 2025 15:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/101399
DOI:	10.3390/nu16070942

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