akkermansia

Apparently supplementing Akkermansia in obese mice has extremely beneficial effects on weight and all sorts of health measures.

People who started out with lower stores of Akkermansia had more after they followed the fiber-rich calorie-restricted diet.

Prebiotics like Akkermansia help improve the mucin layer in the colon.

It's a chicken and egg problem, but reduced Akkermansia muciniphila is associated with obesity and supplementation seems to improve metabolic disorder, but research is limited.

The weird part is Akkermansia actually eats the mucin layer.

The western high-fat/carb diet also seems to cause Akkermansia populations to drop The West, typically, eats a tiny, tiny fraction of the fat it used to.

You would think that would cause a less dense mucous layer, but the presence of Akkermansia actually causes goblet cells in your gut produce more mucin which strengthens the mucous layer.

> They put Acinetobacter and Akkermansia bacteria into samples of healthy blood.

The big exciting candidate right now is Akkermansia muciniphila, which seems to emit a glucagon-like peptide that moderates appetite [1] (similar to drugs like Wegovy, only maybe without the side effects.) The western high-fat/carb diet also seems to cause Akkermansia populations to drop precipitously, which may be either cause or a separate side-effect of the obesity epidemic.

The summary for "Study 2" mentions Akkermansia muciniphila--which is not mentioned even once in the linked study.

Akkermansia muciniphila with a Layer Origins Super Reds [5, 6].

A paper I really like shows that a specific protein from a common gut microbe (Akkermansia muciniphila) confers resistance to diet induced weight gain, insulin insensitivity, etc.