Obesogenic diet in aging mice disrupts gut microbe composition and alters neutrophil:lymphocyte ratio, leading to inflamed milieu in acute heart failure

What is it about?

Hear failure is leading cause of death due to chronic and unresolved age-related inflammation following heart attack. Calorie-enriched diet (obesogenic) in aging is more deleterious to health which impacts microflora in the gut ultimately leading to persistent low-grade inflammation. Obesogenic diet is the typical Western diet which contains higher ratio of omega-6 fatty acids to omega-3 fatty acids, when the same obesogenic diet is fed to aging mice for 2 months that resulted in change of fecal microbiome composition which is pathological in nature. When the mice mere subjected the experimental acute heart failure using coronary artery ligation, the blood neutrophil:lymphocyte ratio was increased in aging mice with sign of non-resolving inflammation. Calorie-enriched diet adversely influences the immune defensive leukocytes in spleen by decreasing phagocytic macrophages in aging. Thus, aging mice fed on high energy-enriched diet also increased the levels of plasma inflammatory mediators, enhanced markers of oxidative stress, lowered fatty acid regulating enzymes thereby development of inflamed milieu. Altogether, obesogenic diet disrupted the gut microbiota which eventually correlates with the low grade non-resolving inflammation increasing the risk of acute decompensated heart failure.

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