This Slimy Bacterium May Fight Obesity
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Akkermansia muciniphila, a mucin-eating, gram-negative, obligate anaerobe that lives happily in the intestinal tract—that is, if you're lucky, as more and more data point to A muciniphila as an obesity-fighting bacterium. The presence of A muciniphila goes down as BMI goes up in humans, and mouse studies have shown that treatment with live A muciniphila reduced weight gain by 50% when mice were put on a high-fat diet. But mice aren't people. And until now, all of the suggestive findings about this bacterium were based on association, not causation.
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@aishee A pilot randomized trial of A muciniphila administration among individuals with metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance were carried out. Thirty-two such individuals were randomized to placebo, live A muciniphila, or dead pasteurized A muciniphila. The active treatment groups took around 10 billion bacteria (suspended in glycerin) daily for 3 months. The primary outcome was safety, and the good news is that there were no serious adverse events.