Ground-breaking study found that a combination of a probiotic and prebiotic—referred to as a ‘synbiotic’ — can significantly reduce heart muscle damage caused by diet-induced cardiac disease
There is growing understanding of the importance of gut health for our general health – for immunity, in regulating blood sugar, and its beneficial effect on the brain and mental health, dubbed ‘the gut-brain axis’. Little is known about the effect of gut health on heart health, although as an area it’s garnering attention. With high obesity rates driving up cardiovascular disease incidence, caused by high blood pressure, high cholesterol and inflammation of the heart, the scientific community and food industry continue to search for novel ways to unlock heart health benefits for the world’s population.
In a recent, ground-breaking study, researchers at APC Microbiome Ireland (APC) a world leading Research Ireland centre at University College Cork have discovered a means of reducing the harmful effects of diet on heart muscle, linked to heart disease. How did APC researchers uncover this effect? By influencing what happens in the gut. And what was Tate & Lyle’s involvement? They did it with our fibre plus a probiotic.
Here, Prof. Noel Caplice of APC, our research partner and author of the peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, explains how his team have established, for the first time, the full extent of the gut-heart pathway, with potentially major implications for heart disease prevention.
What were APC researchers investigating?
Obesity leads to cardiovascular complications, most commonly diastolic heart failure, which is a stiffening of the heart, when pressure builds up and thickens the heart muscle. This is caused by high blood pressure, principally, but also high cholesterol and inflammation. My team at APC had a suspicion that this inflammation in and around the heart could be generated from the gut.
How could what happens in the gut, affect the heart?
When people, or in this case our human scale model, have a poor diet, the bacteria or ‘bugs’ in the gut change, with an overgrowth of pro-inflammatory bugs and suppression of anti-inflammatory bugs. The latter eat away at the protective mucous gut lining, that forms the gut barrier, which can lead to a ‘leaky gut’.
This depletion of the barrier means that the pro-inflammatory bugs can cause chaos for the immune system, as the gut is the largest immune organ in the body, as well as causing inflammatory factors to spill into your blood and reach the heart. If you are already experiencing high blood pressure, the arrival of these inflammatory factors amplifies everything.
What did you hope to discover?
Historically, treating high blood pressure, the main cause of this heart thickening, has been the focus of cardiac prevention and treatment due to its contribution to long-term cardiac risk and increased mortality, alongside effects on the eyes, the brain and the kidneys. Existing cardiac drugs treat high blood pressure to reduce or even reverse this thickening and treat other end organ risk.
We asked ourselves: could addressing inflammation of the heart be as important as addressing high blood pressure in treating this condition? Suspecting changes in the gut environment to be a significant cause of inflammation, we hypothesised that an intervention that improved the gut barrier function could potentially reduce the effects of a poor diet on the heart.
For our intervention, with guidance from Tate & Lyle’s nutrition scientists, we used the company’s prebiotic – PROMITOR® Soluble Fibre, in combination with a probiotic (known as a ‘synbiotic’ when taken together) – and we were blown away by what we found.
What were the results?
Put simply, we’ve shown that inflammation pathways causing problems for the heart do originate from the gut. If we ‘close the door’ in the gut – by better protecting the gut wall – the heart can better look after itself.
Using a human scale model, we’ve been able to plot the specific pathways that are activated in the gut, establishing the gut-heart axis. For the first time, we have shown that a prebiotic combination targeting the gut can positively influence heart function,
Crucially, our study shows that use of our synbiotic can help to reduce the observed thickening of the heart, while having no effect on blood pressure. So, the big takeaway is that inflammation is separate to high blood pressure but does also contribute to the thickening of the heart muscle. The cardio community is still very early on in its understanding of the gut-heart axis and no studies have targeted this intended end point.
How could this be possible?
The study showed us that the prebiotic -Tate & Lyle’s PROMITOR® Soluble Fibre - combined with a probiotic, when taken together as a synbiotic, led to a much higher concentration of the probiotic being retained in the gut, and for longer. This happens because, most likely, the probiotic bugs ‘feed’ on Tate & Lyle’s fibre used in the study, allowing them to thrive and multiply, creating a healthier balance in the gut environment or ‘microbiome’. This, in turn, helps limit damage to the gut wall and, as we now know, the heart!
What are the implications for population heart health?
This is a new, additional way of looking at beneficial effects on heart health, with the gut-heart axis now established in a human scale model. These results indicate that the use of synbiotics targeting inflammation pathways could be hugely beneficial for preventative health for high-risk groups, but also as a complementary treatment alongside cardiac drugs, delivering material health gains. This is especially exciting as some people find blood pressure medicine doesn’t completely manage their thickening of the heart, so this approach could provide added support: a ‘double-pronged approach’ to cardiac treatment.
Commenting on the implications for food and drink producers, Jim Carr, Tate & Lyle’s Director of Food Applications, said:
“I love to see Tate & Lyle supporting research that breaks new ground in the study of the gut microbiome. For food and drink producers, delivering synbiotic benefits in different foods will require a fundamental understanding of prebiotic fibres, and the selection, production and delivery of prebiotics as well as, and perhaps most importantly, an understanding of synbiotic combinations that are most effective in delivering health benefits, such as those demonstrated in this study.
“So, the focus for producers keen to explore these findings for their own innovation strategies should be on identifying the most effective probiotics or ‘bugs’ and creating synbiotic combinations with the right prebiotic, such as Tate & Lyle’s PROMITOR Soluble Fibre, using the most effective delivery platform, whether that is in a nutritional supplement, fortified food or drink product or even a personalised nutrition application.
“This area does have potential as, while synbiotics do exist in nature – human breast milk is considered by many to be synbiotic, with its healthful probiotics and prebiotic carbohydrates – they are not by any means commonplace, so this could present a real opportunity for packaged food and drink to help unlock new heart health approaches at a time when they are much needed.
“Ultimately, solutions like these are being explored by the specialist food formulators at Tate & Lyle, and there is all to play for!”