Gut microbiota-directed intervention with high-amylose maize ameliorates metabolic dysfunction in diet-induced obese mice

Obesity is a chronic disease that may lead to the development of metabolic diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and cancers and has been predicted to affect one billion adults by 2030. Owing to the pivotal role of the gut microbiota in health, including metabolism and energy homeostasis, dietary fiber, the primary energy resource for the gut microbiota, not only helps reduce appetite and short-term food intake but also modulates the structure of the gut microbiota. In this study, we investigated whether high-amylose maize (HAM), with a particular amount of dietary fiber, improves dysmetabolism and gut microbiota dysbiosis in diet-induced obese mice. Promisingly, the HAM dietary intervention not only reduced body weight gain, adipocyte hypertrophy, and dyslipidemia but also mitigated non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, insulin resistance, impaired glucose tolerance, and inflammation in the liver and epididymal white adipose tissues in high-fat diet (HFD)-fed obese mice. In addition, the HAM dietary intervention ameliorated gut microbiota dysbiosis in HFD-fed mice. Changes in families, genera, and species of gut biota that have a relative abundance of 0.01% in at least one group were scrutinized. At the species level, HAM dietary intervention increased Bifidobacterium pseudolongum, Bifidobacterium animalis, Bifidobacterium bifidum, and Lactobacillus paraplantarum and decreased Streptococcus agalactiae, Mucispirillum schaedleri, and Alistipes indistinctus. This change in the gut microbiota driven by the HAM diet was strongly associated with obesity-related indices, highlighting the nutraceutical potential of HAM for improving overall metabolic health. Taken together, this study demonstrates the potential of the HAM diet for mediating metabolic syndrome and gut microbiota dysbiosis.