Cohort Specific Effects of Cereal-bar Supplementation in Overweight Patients With or Without Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

The importance of gut microbes to metabolic health is becoming more evident and nutrition-based therapies to alter the composition of bacterial communities to manage metabolic disease are an attractive avenue to ameliorate some effects of Western diets. While the composition of gut microbial communities can vary significantly across disease states, it is not well known if these communities have common responses to nutritional interventions. To better understand fiber-bacterial community interactions, we collected biological parameters and fecal samples of overweight non-diabetic (OND) and diabetic (OD) individuals before and after daily supplementation of 2.8 g β-glucan on their habitual diet for 30 days. Fecal bacterial communities in an age-matched cohort were measured by sequencing partial 16S rRNA genes and imputed metagenomic content. Unexpectedly, we observed disconnected responses of biological measurements and the bacterial community. Based on average effect size, biological measurements were greater in the OND group while effects on the bacterial community were greatest on the OD cohort, and we suspect these observations are due to the significantly lower alpha diversity in the OD cohort. Our data indicate that responses to fiber supplementation are cohort specific and this should be considered when manipulating the microbiome via fiber supplementation.