Fecal bacteria transplantation replicates aerobic exercise to reshape the gut microbiota in mice to inhibit high-fat diet-induced atherosclerosis

Aerobic exercise has a strong impact on gut microbiota (GM) and atherosclerosis (AS). However, there have been no studies exploring the effect of using fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) based on aerobic exercise to reshape GM in mice with AS. Model mice were subjected to aerobic exercise and AS induction for 10 weeks each, followed by 8 weeks of FMT for the latter group. Observations were made on AS phenotype and GM changes, and the correlation between AS risk factors and GM was analyzed. Results showed that FMT replicated the effects of aerobic exercise in improving the AS phenotype and rebalancing GM, including mitigating weight gain induced by a high-fat diet (HFD), reducing lipid accumulation, correcting abnormal lipid metabolism, and dampening the inflammatory response. FMT also increased GM diversity, abundance, and the number of beneficial bacteria. Moreover, AS risk factors (biochemical indicators) were negatively correlated with beneficial bacterial genera and positively correlated with harmful bacterial genera. Importantly, the FMT group and the aerobic exercise group exhibited high consistency in morphology, histopathology, biochemistry, and 16S rRNA sequencing.Our findings demonstrated that aerobic exercise-based FMT to reshape GM inhibited the development of AS, which was an effective therapeutic strategy.