How the gut breaks down a common compound found in meat and dairy is key to understanding arthritis, according to a study from ET HealthWorld.
New Delhi: How a common compound found in protein-rich foods like meat and dairy breaks down during digestion could be key to understanding how inflammatory diseases like arthritis develop, new research suggests. rheumatoid. This compound, called tryptophan, helps the body produce proteins, muscles, enzymes and neurotransmitters. It is not produced by the body, but is received through the food we consume.
Researchers found in mice that the byproducts formed during the breakdown of the compound tryptophan depend on the type of cells in the gut doing the “decomposition” – body cells or bacterial cells.
While the body’s cells break down tryptophan to produce anti-inflammatory products, bacterial cells break down the compound to produce indoles, which prompts the body to produce more inflammatory autoreactive T cells, according to Kristine Kuhn, head of the division. of rheumatology. University of Colorado, USA.
Additionally, the type of diet we eat regularly has been shown to be important in determining how tryptophan is broken down.
“A diet high in plant fiber and lean meats – that whole Mediterranean diet – seems to push the microbiome towards a healthier state, so you benefit from the anti-inflammatory properties of tryptophan, whereas the typical Western diet seems to go more towards the inflammatory pathway,” said Kuhn, co-author of the study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
“It’s about finding the right route for the body’s tryptophan,” she added.
Kuhn said the study builds on previous research that linked changes in the gut microbiome to increased production of indoles in patients with spondyloarthritis – different from rheumatoid arthritis which causes joint inflammation, but closely related disease affecting the joints of the spine.
Similar results were found in arthritis studies involving mice, she said.
For this study, researchers put mice on antibiotics to eliminate their microbiome and found that they did not suffer from arthritis or indoles.
So they tried to find out what would happen if the mice were put on a diet low in tryptophan.
“The microbiome cannot break down tryptophan into indole, and the mice did not suffer from arthritis. So we showed in two different ways that it is tryptophan that is broken down by the microbiome into indole,” said Kuhn.
The paper concludes that blocking indole production may present unique avenues for treatments of rheumatoid arthritis and spondyloarthritis, which Kuhn said is what the team wants to explore further.
“How do you maintain that balance so that tryptophan goes toward that anti-inflammatory pathway? How can you manipulate the gut bacteria to tip that balance? That’s where we want to go in the future,” Kuhn said.
