Gut microbiome diversity and composition is associated with hypertension in women

Objectives: Animal studies support a role for the gut microbiota in hypertension development, but large human studies are lacking. Here, we investigated the relationship between hypertension prevalence and gut microbial composition in two cohorts. Methods: We included 871 unrelated TwinsUK women with faecal microbiome data (16s rRNA gene sequencing). Multivariable linear models adjusted for age, age2 and BMI as well as MiRKAT models, were used to estimate the association of hypertension with alpha- and beta-diversity metrics. To identify taxa associated with hypertension, a generalized additive model for location scale and shape was computed adjusting for covariates and multiple testing. Results were replicated in 448 women from PREDICT-1. Results: We found that measures of alpha diversity are significantly lower in hypertensive cases [Beta(95% confidence interval, 95% CI) = −0.05 (−0.095 to −0.004), P = 0.03] and a significant association between beta diversity and hypertension (FDR 
Source: Journal of Hypertension - Category: Cardiology Tags: ORIGINAL PAPERS: Gut bacteria and hypertension Source Type: research