Exercise-induced modulation of gut microbiota in rats with metabolic syndromes

Obesity and diabetes mellitus are multifactor diseases associated to cardiovascular disorders that affect huge proportion of our society. Growing evidence suggests that gut microbes contribute to several pathological conditions as well as the exercise is a well-known agent used for numerous pathologies treatments, such as obesity and hypertension. As only a small fraction of the bacterial communities present in the gut can be in vitro cultured, barcode 16S rRNA gene pyrosequencing from fecal samples collected before and after exercise training was used for to access the relationship between controlled exercise training and gut microbiota composition in the obese (OB), non-obese rats (WISTAR) and spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). The central hypothesis of this study was that controlled exercise would lead to significant changes in the composition of gut microbial communities.