Nature Microbiology recently published the results of a multi-cohort multi-omic analysis that examined the link between coffee consumption and the gut microbiome. This study builds on work originally published in Nature Medicine several years ago by the same group, which reported that of all the foods examined in a cohort of over 1,000 “deeply phenotyped” participants, coffee had the strongest association with a specific gut microbial signature.
This recent publication analyzed the largest dataset related to coffee consumption to date, including over 22,000 shotgun metabolomic samples from participants reporting their long-term coffee consumption, pulling from multiple cohorts in both the U.S. and the U.K., as well as cohorts with publicly available data. This analysis confirmed the original findings, i.e., a highly reproducible relationship was observed between coffee consumption and a microbial signature. This was largely driven by the presence and abundance of the species Lawsonibacter asaccharolyticus, found to be 4.5 to 8-fold more abundant in coffee drinkers vs non-drinkers.
Subsequent experiments found that this species also grew better in vitro when supplemented with coffee, and a plasma metabolomics analysis of 438 samples found the compounds quinic acid and trigonelline (and related metabolites) to be enriched (and associated with L. asaccharolyticus). Quinic acid is a metabolite of chlorogenic acid, the primary polyphenol in coffee.
In addition to L. asaccharolyticus, 115 other species-level genome bins (SGBs, indicative of species) also responded positively to coffee. While the precise metabolic pathways and the metabolic effects of the metabolites of the microbiome are not fully understood yet, this close correlation between coffee consumption and the microbiome may help promote understanding of the favorable effects coffee has on multiple chronic diseases and overall mortality risk and point to possible mechanisms by which specific foods influence overall health.