Zeevi: Gut microbes metabolize red meat carnitine into atherosclerosis-causing TMAO
David Zeevi · David Zeevi on Personalized Nutrition Based on Your Gut Microbiome · Y Combinator · Aug 22, 2018 · at 18:07
Dr. David Zeevi, computational biologist studying personalized nutrition and the microbiome, explains how specific gut bacteria interact with diet to trigger cardiovascular disease mechanisms.
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“They looked at carnitine, which is a compound that is found in red meat. This carnitine is metabolized by the microbiome to form TMA. It's a compound. TMA is then oxidized in the liver to form TMAO, and TMAO causes a reduce in reverse cholesterol transport and bile acid synthesis, and these are long words, but what it eventually means is that it causes atherosclerosis. These two processes, if they're reduced, it causes atherosclerosis. It causes your arteries to clot. And interestingly, if you remove these specific microbes that metabolize carnitine from the equation, the downstream effects are attenuated as well.”
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