A large international team of medical researchers has found that people who drink coffee regularly have much more of one type of gut bacteria than people who do not. In their study, published in the journal Nature Microbiology, the group analysed stool and blood samples from a large number of patients and also studied similar data in large medical databases, looking for the impacts of coffee drinking on the gut biome.

Nathan McNulty and Jeffrey Gordon with the Washington University School of Medicine have published a News & Views piece in the same journal issue outlining this work.

Prior research has shown that food and beverage consumption have impacts on the gut biome, the community of fungi, yeasts and bacteria that live in the human gastrointestinal tract. But which foods promote a healthy biome and which are detrimental are still not well understood.

In this new study, the research team sought to learn more about the impact of a single food, or in this case a beverage, on the gut biome. They chose coffee for two reasons: First because it is consumed by so many people; second, because it is either consumed every day or not at all.

To learn about the impact of coffee drinking on the gut biome, the researchers began by analysing medical data for approximately 22,800 people living in the U.K. and the U.S. and for another 54,200 people in 211 cohorts. This allowed them to compare stool sample data from people who reported drinking coffee and those who did not while exploring differences in the gut biome between the two groups.

The researchers found one major difference in the two groups—the population numbers of a bacteria called Lawsonibacter asaccharolyticus. Those people who drank coffee regularly had levels as high as eight times those who did not—and the difference held steady for people all around the globe.

The research team acknowledges that they do not know what impact higher levels of L. asaccharolyticus may have on people, but suggest it is likely associated with health benefits that have been attributed to coffee drinking. They suggest there are substantial impacts of a single food or beverage on the human gut biome.

More information: Paolo Manghi et al, Coffee consumption is associated with intestinal Lawsonibacter a saccharolyticus abundance and prevalence across multiple cohorts, Nature Microbiology (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41564-024-01858-9

Nathan P. McNulty et al, Coffee habits help shape gut communities, Nature Microbiology (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41564-024-01869-6

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