Gut Microbes Influence Binge-Eating of Sweet Treats - Neuroscience News

Summary: The absence of certain gut bacteria causes mice to binge eat sweet, palatable foods.

When the bacteria is restored, the desire to binge on sweetened foods decreases, and normal feeding patterns are resumed.

Now, new research in mice shows that specific gut bacteria may suppress binge eating behavior.

The new Caltech study shows that the absence of certain gut bacteria causes mice to binge eat palatable foods: Mice with microbiotas disrupted by oral antibiotics consumed 50% more sugar pellets over two hours than mice with gut bacteria.

When their microbiotas were restored through fecal transplants, the mice returned to normal feeding behavior.

Further, not all bacteria in the gut are able to suppress hedonic feeding, but rather specific species appear to alter the behavior.

To examine how the gut microbiota influenced feeding behaviors, Ousey gave a group of mice antibiotics for four weeks, wiping out the animals’ gut bacteria.

He then compared their feeding behavior to normal mice with a healthy gut microbiota.

Importantly, this binge eating behavior is actually reversible: The researchers could return the mice back to normal feeding behavior simply by restoring the mouse microbiota through a fecal transplant.

The gut microbiota contains hundreds of bacterial species, and the team suspected that some were more influential than others in driving the binge eating behavior.

When these bacterial species were given to the antibiotic-treated mice, but not other bacteria, hedonic feeding was suppressed.

“We know that humans with eating disorders like binge eating disorder and anorexia nervosa have differences in their gut microbiota compared to humans that are not diagnosed with these conditions.

“Gut microbiota suppress feeding induced by palatable foods” by James Ousey et al.

Gut microbiota suppress feeding induced by palatable foods

The gut microbiota is a major environmental contributor to host physiology and impacts feeding behavior

Here, we explored the hypothesis that gut bacteria influence behavioral responses to palatable foods and reveal that antibiotic depletion (ABX) of the gut microbiota in mice results in overconsumption of several palatable foods with conserved effects on feeding dynamics

Indeed, colonization of mice with S24-7 and Lactobacillus johnsonii was sufficient to reduce overconsumption of high-sucrose pellets in an antibiotic-induced model of binge eating

These results demonstrate that extrinsic influences from the gut microbiota can suppress the behavioral response toward palatable foods in mice