Dietary fiber intake associates with improved survival and microbiome composition in allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation

Authors:

Abstract
Diet is linked to changes in gut microbiota and metabolite production with clinical relevance in several disease settings, although these effects remain poorly defined. We performed prospective, real-time diet monitoring (37,929 food items, 3,837 patient days) and longitudinal microbiome and metabolite profiling (1,230 fecal samples) in a clinical cohort of 173 patients undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation. Patients with pre-transplant fiber intake above the cohort average had significantly improved overall survival (p=0.014) and reduced incidence of grades 2–4 acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) (p=0.032) post-transplant. Those consuming insoluble fiber had increased microbial diversity, enriched butyrate-producing taxa, and depleted Enterococcus . Those who developed lower gastrointestinal GVHD had reduced fecal butyrate levels. In a GVHD preclinical model, we confirmed that a fiber-enriched diet increased survival, cecal butyrate, and regulatory-to-conventional T cell ratio. Thus, we demonstrated that dietary fiber has clinical significance as a modifiable factor with microbiome-mediated effects.

This publication has 79 references indexed in Scilit: