Clostridium butyricum restores gut health damaged by high-fat diets: animal study

Korea has recently taken the lead in early-onset colorectal cancer, with 12.9 cases per 100,000 people under the age of 50. Particularly concerning is the rise among individuals in their 20s through 40s, a trend experts attribute largely to the westernization of diets—specifically, the surge in high-fat consumption.

This dietary shift is not only taking a toll on gastrointestinal health, contributing to conditions like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), but also on broader metabolic systems. High-fat diets are known drivers of obesity, fatty liver disease, and abnormal lipid levels, and now appear to be accelerating the rise of colorectal disease.

A research team led by Professor Kim Na-young of the Department of Internal Medicine at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital (SNUBH) has identified a potential remedy to the gut damage caused by high-fat diets. Their studies reveal that the bacterium Clostridium butyricum (C. butyricum), when consumed as a probiotic, can help restore gut balance.

Published in Digestive Diseases and Sciences and the Journal of Neurogastroenterology and Motility, Kim’s research team—featuring Choi Yong-hoon, Nam Ryoung-hee, and Choi Soo-in—shines a light on gut microbiome imbalances, or dysbiosis, as a major contributor to colorectal disease. 

High-fat diets disrupt the delicate bacterial ecosystem in the gut, fueling inflammation and heightening disease risk. This discovery has spurred efforts to develop probiotics that can fight inflammation and restore gut health.

Among the potential solutions, butyric acid—a short-chain fatty acid produced by certain gut bacteria—has emerged as a potent defender of gut health. Known for its anti-inflammatory and immune-boosting properties, butyric acid helps prevent the colonization of harmful bacteria, ensuring gut resilience. 

Using a rat model, Kim’s team demonstrated that C. butyricum produces butyric acid, effectively restoring gut health despite the damaging effects of excessive fat intake.

The study split the rats into three groups—normal diet, high-fat diet, and high-fat diet with C. butyricum supplementation—tracking changes in their gut microbiota, colon mucosa, and feces over eight weeks.

The results showed that the high-fat diet group showed a spike in inflammatory substances and fat buildup in the colonic mucosa, alongside a decline in beneficial bacteria, particularly butyric acid producers. Worse still, these rats displayed increased intestinal permeability and a drop in carbohydrate and energy metabolism—signs that their gut health and overall metabolic processes were under attack.

But for the rats on the high-fat diet with C. butyricum, the outcome was entirely different. The probiotic reversed the damage, decreasing inflammatory substances, and increasing fecal butyric acid levels, and restoring gut permeability and energy metabolism to near-normal levels. 

The recovery was especially pronounced in male rats, suggesting that future research should take gender differences into account when exploring treatments for gut dysbiosis caused by poor diets.

According to SNUBH, C. butyricum could be a potent tool not only for restoring gut health but for tackling metabolic diseases like childhood obesity, which is on the rise due to high-fat diets.

“We found that a high-fat diet disrupts the gut microbiota and impairs metabolism, but C. butyricum played a crucial role in reversing these effects,” said Professor Kim. With the surge in serious intestinal diseases—such as colorectal cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, and irritable bowel syndrome—and the rise of metabolic disorders like childhood obesity, Kim added that her team’s research “confirms the potential of C. butyricum as a probiotic treatment.”

The full study detailing these findings was published in the two international journals -- Digestive Diseases and Sciences, and Journal of Neurogastroenterology and Motility.