Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most common chronic liver disease, and there is still a lack of effective clinical drugs. A large number of studies have shown that intestinal flora disturbance is an important factor in the pathogenesis of obesity-based metabolic diseases. Therefore, targeting intestinal flora regulation is considered to be an important new strategy for the prevention and treatment of metabolic diseases. Polysaccharides are a class of natural macromolecular compounds widely distributed in traditional Chinese medicine. A large number of studies have shown that plant polysaccharides have clear effects on the regulation of body metabolism, but the exact mechanism is not completely clear.
The team of Prof. Houkai Li confirmed in the previous study that the main effective part of Qi-boosting traditional Chinese medicine Astragalus, astragalus polysaccharide, has the effect of improving obesity and NAFLD, and through metagenomic combined with non-targeted metabolomics analysis, it was observed that Astragalus polysaccharide has an effect on the intestinal tract. The regulatory effect of microbiota and microbiota metabolites proposed the "drug-gut microbiota-microbiota metabolite-host metabolism" relationship axis hypothesis that astragalus polysaccharides improve NAFLD formation. Based on this scientific hypothesis, the research team explored the specific gut bacteria and related metabolites regulated by astragalus polysaccharides through a multi-omics combined strategy. Gut bacteria, Desulfovibrio vulgaris. Further research confirmed that the bacterium is not only a natural H2S-producing bacterium, but also has the ability to produce acetic acid with high efficiency. Exogenous supplementation of this bacteria can significantly improve liver steatosis, insulin sensitivity and weight gain in high-fat diet-fed mice. Liver RNA seq analysis and molecular biology studies confirmed that the improvement of NAFLD was related to the inhibition of liver FASN and CD36 protein expression. This study provides new evidence for explaining the mechanism of astragalus polysaccharides in improving NAFLD, and also provides a reference for exploring the mechanism of plant polysaccharides regulating intestinal flora and improving host metabolism by means of multi-omics technology.
