Despite major strides in reducing cardiovascular disease (CVD) burden with modification of classical CVD risk factors, significant residual risks remain. Recent discoveries linking intestinal microbiota and CVDs have broadened our understanding of how dietary nutrients may impact cardiovascular health and disease. While next-generation sequencing techniques can identify gut microbial community participants and provide insights into microbial composition shifts in response to physiologic responses and dietary exposures, provision of a prebiotic or probiotic has yet to show therapeutic benefit for CVD. Meanwhile, our evolving understanding of intestinal microbiota-derived physiologic modulators (e.g. short-chain fatty acids) and pathogenic mediators (e.g. trimethylamine N-oxide) of host disease susceptibility have created novel potential therapeutic opportunities for improved cardiovascular health. This review will discuss the roles of human intestinal microbiota in normal physiology, their associations with CVD susceptibilities, and the potential of modulating intestinal microbiota composition and metabolism as a novel therapeutic target for CVD.
Tang et al. (Mon,) studied this question.