Short Communication: Obesity Intervention Resulting in Significant Changes in the Human Gut Viral Composition

Abstract

Obesity is a health problem of global concern that negatively impacts quality of life. Various studies have implicated obesity in the disruption of the normal microbiome composition. The virome consists of a collection of all the viruses that inhabit a particular niche. However, the study of such viruses that compose the human gut microbiome in the context of obesity has been paid little attention. One interesting aspect of virome study is the description of phages that can specifically interact with the bacterial component of the microbiota and modulate the microbiome’s dynamics. Previous work showed that the microbiota composition changes after obesity treatment and that these changes are country specific. In this work, we perform a quick gut viral composition of the gut microbiota of patients from Denmark, Italy, and Chile before and after obesity intervention using metagenomic sequences previously published and bioinformatics tools. Our results showed that obesity treatment results in significant changes in the human gut viral composition. These results conclude that the virome composition changes after obesity intervention by suggesting that changes can be related to the microbiota rearrangements reported in other works and may be involved in microbial dynamics after treatment.

Keywords

• obesity
• human gut microbiome
• human gut virome
• viral changes