The impact of AXOS intake in overweight individuals with metabolic syndrome.

We have recently published data regarding a randomized cross-over intervention using AXOS and poly-unsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) on a cohort of subjects with overweight and metabolic syndrome (MetS). By using a bacterial 16S amplicons based approach we observed the already known bifidogenic effect of AXOS in the human gut. Moreover, we showed for the first time that intake of ~10 g/day AXOS, for 4 weeks, drives significant changes in the structure of the human gut microbiota as a whole by concomitantly increasing the abundance of pivotal species for butyrate production. Our data also indicated that minor effects of AXOS intake had place at physiological and metabolic levels by inspection of several clinical parameters. As a consequence, we aimed the present study to characterize a more detailed response from the human body to AXOS in order to gain insights with respect to the less visible metabolic effects associated with consumption of this type of dietary fiber. For such aim, we have analyzed the group of responders to AXOS consumption (to whom the gut microbiota was significantly altered) from our early study (first period/arm of the AXOS cross-over design).Registration: Registered under ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier no.NCT02215343