Exploring The Relationship Between Physical Activity Level And The Gut Microbiome In Adult Chilean Population

The relationship between gut microbiome and physical activity has been studied in athletes and clinical subjects, but not in the general population. This is the first study in Latinamerica that analyzes intestinal microbiome composition and its association with physical activity level (PAL) in general population. PURPOSE: To describe the relationship between gut microbiome and physical activity level on adults METHODS: The sample was composed of 233 subjects, from tha ages 18 to 70 years-old (148 women and 85 men) from all Chilean regions. To assess PAL, participants self-administered the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) including frequency and duration of strength exercise. Data from this questionnaire were handled in a blind manner. For the bacterial analysis, stool samples from the adult Chilean population were examined. The construction of the ASV count table, necessary for taxonomic assignment, was accomplished using DADA2 implemented in R software. The processing of the samples included 16SrRNA sequencing and genus-level taxonomic classification based on the RDP SILVA database. To account for multiple comparisons, p-values were adjusted using the Benjamini-Hochberg method. A p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. RESULTS: In terms of PAL, the subjects were categorized as follows: high (26.61%), moderate (34.3%), and light (39.1%). At the phylum level, a relative abundance was primarily observed in Firmicutes (67%), followed by Bacteroidota (25%). Predominant genera included Bacteroides (14%), Blautia (10%), and Faecalibacterium (8%). Further analysis of the gut microbiome (GM) composition in relation to PAL revealed that both alpha diversity, as measured by Shannon Entropy, and beta diversity did not show significant differences across the PAL groups. CONCLUSIONS: The composition of the gut microbiome remains consistent across different PALs. In the population studied, variations in PAL do not appear to be related the gut microbiome's composition. CORFO-IFAN p29