ArticleMicrobiome2018
Use of dietary indices to control for diet in human gut microbiota studies.
Article in Microbiome, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 78 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
78 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Adherence to the Mediterranean diet can beneficially affect the gut microbiota composition: a systematic review.BMC medical genomics · 2024Pooled it
- Epigenome-wide association study of diet quality in the Women's Health Initiative and TwinsUK cohort.International journal of epidemiology · 2021Pooled it
- Diet-Related Alterations of Gut Bile Salt Hydrolases Determined Using a Metagenomic Analysis of the Human Microbiome.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Pooled it
- Temporal nutrition analysis associates dietary regularity and quality with gut microbiome diversity: insights from the Food & You digital cohort.Nature communications · 2025Trial
- Distinct Diet-Microbiota-Metabolism Interactions in Overweight and Obese Pregnant Women: a Metagenomics Approach.Microbiology spectrum · 2022Trial
- Probiotic normalization of systemic inflammation in siblings of type 1 diabetes patients: an open-label pilot study.Scientific reports · 2022Trial
- Additional Resistant Starch from One Potato Side Dish per Day Alters the Gut Microbiota but Not Fecal Short-Chain Fatty Acid Concentrations.Nutrients · 2022Trial
- Targeting the perinatal diet to modulate the gut microbiota increases dietary variety and prebiotic and probiotic food intakes: results from a randomised controlled trial.Public health nutrition · 2021Trial
- Enterolignan Production in a Flaxseed Intervention Study in Postmenopausal US Women of African Ancestry and European Ancestry.Nutrients · 2021Trial
- The association between adapted dietary index for gut microbiota and carotid intima-media thickness among overweight or obese children and adolescents.Acta diabetologica · 2026Article
- The gut microbiota of hepato-pancreatico-biliary and gastric cancer patients is altered in composition and functionality.Irish journal of medical science · 2026Article
- Enteral Feeds: Benefits and Drawbacks Associated with Blenderized Feeds and Commercial Formulas-A Narrative Review.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2026Review
- Diabetes Mellitus as an Integrated Microbiome, Immune, and Metabolic Disorder with Clinical Implications for Multisystem Complications and Public Health.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Review
- Relationship Between Diet Quality, Intestinal Permeability, and Gut Microbiota Features in Individuals with Obesity.Nutrients · 2026Article
- Association between the novel dietary index for gut microbiota and diabetic kidney disease among patients with diabetes: evidence from the NHANES.BMC public health · 2026Article
- The dietary index for gut microbiota and risk of advanced cardio-kidney-metabolic syndrome.Clinical and experimental medicine · 2026Article
- Beyond a universal obesity microbiome signature: pre-intervention heterogeneity and a framework for baseline profiling.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Review
- Distinct diet-microbiome associations in autism spectrum disorder.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Long-term follow-up study on the impact of a gut microbiota-supportive diet on heart failure and mortality outcomes.International journal of cardiology. Cardiovascular risk and prevention · 2025Article
- Red meat consumption in higher healthy eating index diets is associated with brain health critical nutritional adequacy, and fecal microbial diversity.Scientific reports · 2025Article
18 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundEnvironmental factors have a large influence on the composition of the human gut microbiota. One of the most influential and well-studied is host diet. To assess and interpret the impact of non-dietary factors on the gut microbiota, we endeavoured to determine the most appropriate method to summarise community variation attributable to dietary effects. Dietary habits are multidimensional with internal correlations. This complexity can be simplified by using dietary indices that quantify dietary variance in a single measure and offer a means of controlling for diet in microbiota studies. However, to date, the applicability of different dietary indices to gut microbiota studies has not been assessed. Here, we use food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) data from members of the TwinsUK cohort to create three different dietary measures applicable in western-diet populations: The Healthy Eating Index (HEI), the Mediterranean Diet Score (MDS) and the Healthy Food Diversity index (HFD-Index). We validate and compare these three indices to determine which best summarises dietary influences on gut microbiota composition.
resultsAll three indices were independently validated using established measures of health, and all were significantly associated with microbiota measures; the HEI had the highest t values in models of alpha diversity measures, and had the highest number of associations with microbial taxa. Beta diversity analyses showed the HEI explained the greatest variance of microbiota composition. In paired tests between twins discordant for dietary index score, the HEI was associated with the greatest variation of taxa and twin dissimilarity.
conclusionsWe find that the HEI explains the most variance in, and has the strongest association with, gut microbiota composition in a western (UK) population, suggesting that it may be the best summary measure to capture gut microbiota variance attributable to habitual diet in comparable populations.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.