Metabolic disorders, as chronic non-communicable diseases, are among the highest European and worldwide biomedical research priorities. Their prevalence is rising, and they may also increase the risk of many comorbidities, including cardiovascular diseases. The gut microbiota and environment are usually altered in subjects with metabolic disorders. The mucus barrier protects the host mucosa from the bacteria, reducing the possibility of interaction and, consequently, host responses. Thus, the mucus barrier and microbiota are potential therapeutic targets to improve the metabolism status of patients. It will also be important to identify useful biomarkers of the gut mucus/microbiota motility in metabolic diseases for further research on diagnosis and monitoring to reduce long-term complications.
MEDMOTILUS project aimed to understand better the relationship between gut mucus/microbiota homeostasis and metabolic status, specifically regarding bacterial motility. In addition, the project had secondary objectives, which included evaluating new methods for studying the gut environment and validating an animal model for metabolic diseases. The project was designed with a multi-omics and multidisciplinary approach that involved a large human cohort and animal models.
There were three main conclusions of this project. The first is that healthy and lean subjects showed greater gut bacterial motility potential without adverse metabolic alterations than obese subjects. The second is that the pig could be a better biomedical model to study the gut mucus barrier and bacterial motility than the mouse. The last is the confirmation of the mucus as a useful tool for studying bacterial motility.
