ArticlemSystems
Age- and Sex-Dependent Patterns of Gut Microbial Diversity in Human Adults.
Article in mSystems. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 255 papers, 8 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
255 citing papers in PubMed, 8 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Gut Microbiota Alterations Associated With Colonization by Multidrug-Resistant Organisms in ICU Patients: First Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.MicrobiologyOpen · 2026Pooled it
- Global Microbiome: Core and Unique Signatures Across Diverse Populations.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Pooled it
- Meta-analysis of 22,710 human microbiome metagenomes defines an oral-to-gut microbial enrichment score and associations with host health and disease.Nature communications · 2025Pooled it
- Meat Consumption and Gut Microbiota: a Scoping Review of Literature and Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials in Adults.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2023Pooled it
- The Effects of Probiotics, Prebiotics and Synbiotics in Non-Alcoholic Fat Liver Disease (NAFLD) and Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH): A Systematic Review.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Pooled it
- Proposal of a health gut microbiome index based on a meta-analysis of Korean and global population datasets.Journal of microbiology (Seoul, Korea) · 2022Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Peripheral blood microbial signatures in current and former smokers.Scientific reports · 2021Pooled it
- Effect of a polyphenol-rich pomegranate extract on plasma trimethylamine N-oxide levels following an oral carnitine challenge: a randomized controlled crossover trial in healthy adults.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Trial
- Comprehensive microbial and clinical profiling of functional constipation: A stratified comparative study of age and constipation subtype.World journal of gastroenterology · 2025Trial
- Sex differences in the gut microbiome and related metabolites: role in cardiometabolic disease.Gut microbes · 2026Review
- Associations of oral microbiome diversity with prevalent cancer: a population-based cross-sectional study.Archives of microbiology · 2026Article
- The Adolescent Microbiome-Gut-Brain Axis: Development, Mechanisms, and Translational Perspectives.Nutrients · 2026Review
- Maternal and infant gut microbiome.iMeta · 2026Review
- Investigating the Kidney-Gut-Brain Axis in CKD: Uremic Toxins and Brain Microhemorrhages.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- Breaking the bottleneck of asthma treatment: the future of omni-targeted therapy.Journal of advanced research · 2026Review
- Age and sex dependent shift in murine gut microbiome reveals pathological links to host cardiovascular and metabolic pathways.GeroScience · 2026Article
- Sex and social group altered the gut microbiome and fecal metabolome in the critically endangered Yangtze finless porpoise (Current zoology · 2026Article
- Association of gut microbiome with mobility impairment in the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2026Article
- Improvement of glucose homeostasis during leptin treatment does not alter the intestinal microbiome in male diabetic UC Davis type-2 diabetes mellitus rats.American journal of physiology. Gastrointestinal and liver physiology · 2026Article
195 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Gut microbial diversity changes throughout the human life span and is known to be associated with host sex. We investigated the association of age, sex, and gut bacterial alpha diversity in three large cohorts of adults from four geographical regions: subjects from the United States and United Kingdom in the American Gut Project (AGP) citizen-science initiative and two independent cohorts of Colombians and Chinese. In three of the four cohorts, we observed a strong positive association between age and alpha diversity in young adults that plateaued after age 40 years. We also found sex-dependent differences that were more pronounced in younger adults than in middle-aged adults, with women having higher alpha diversity than men. In contrast to the other three cohorts, no association of alpha diversity with age or sex was observed in the Chinese cohort. The association of alpha diversity with age and sex remained after adjusting for cardiometabolic parameters in the Colombian cohort and antibiotic usage in the AGP cohort. We further attempted to predict the microbiota age in individuals using a machine-learning approach for the men and women in each cohort. Consistent with our alpha-diversity-based findings, U.S. and U.K. women had a significantly higher predicted microbiota age than men, with a reduced difference being seen above age 40 years. This difference was not observed in the Colombian cohort and was observed only in middle-aged Chinese adults. Together, our results provide new insights into the influence of age and sex on the biodiversity of the human gut microbiota during adulthood while highlighting similarities and differences across diverse cohorts.
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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.