Nearly half of adults in the United States have hypertension, a condition that raises the risk for heart disease and stroke, which are leading causes of death in the U. S.
In a new study from Baylor College of Medicine, researchers found new evidence that disruption of the gut microbiota, known as gut dysbiosis, can have adverse effects on blood pressure.
In the study, the team focused on fasting, both one of the major drivers of the composition of the gut microbiota and a promoter of beneficial heart effects.
They found that hypertensive rats that fasted every other day had strongly reduced blood pressure when compared with rats that had not fasted.
Then the researchers transplanted the microbiota of the rats that had either fasted or fed without restrictions into rats have no microbiota of their own.
They found that the rats that received the microbiota of normally fed hypertensive rats had higher blood pressure than the rats receiving microbiota from normal control rats.
These results demonstrated that the alterations to the microbiota induced by fasting were sufficient to mediate the blood pressure-lowering effect of intermitting fasting.
The team then found the alterations in products of bile acid metabolism stood out as potential mediators of blood pressure regulation.
Supporting this finding, they found that supplementing animals with cholic acid, a primary bile acid, also strongly reduced blood pressure.
Taken together, the study shows for the first time that intermittent fasting can be beneficial in terms of reducing hypertension by reshaping the composition of gut microbiota in an animal model.
The work also provides evidence that gut dysbiosis contributes to high blood pressure by altering bile acid signaling.
If you care about high blood pressure, please read studies about this blood pressure number may help predict dementia, brain lesions and findings of simple things you can do to control blood pressure.
For more information about high blood pressure control, please see recent studies about new blood pressure monitoring method may benefit people with kidney disease and results showing the key to diagnosing, treating high blood pressure.
The study is published in Circulation Research. One author of the study is Dr. David J. Durgan.
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