Gut microbiota and atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases. Prevention of atherosclerosis via altering gut microbiota or modulating its products.

Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) have become a major health problem, because of the associated high morbidity and mortality among patients. Gut microbiota have been recently implicated as a novel endocrine organ that play critical roles in regulating the host cardiometabolic function through producing bioactive metabolites. This review investigated the evidence from several clinical and experimental studies indicating an association between gut microbiota and atherosclerotic CVDs. We mainly focused on the anti-atherogenic gram-negative bacteria, Bacteroides vulgatus and dorei, and their producing lipopolysaccharide. Further, we would pay attention to gut microbiota-derived deleterious metabolites, trimethylamine N-oxide, and described the present status of its related research. We believe some of the methods to change the gut microbiota or reduce the deleterious metabolites could be clinically applied to prevent CVDs in the near future.