The Gut Microbiome and Diet Interact to Dictate Personalized Response to Broccoli Sprout Consumption.

Broccoli sprouts produce sulforaphane (SFN), a dietary isothiocyanate with anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties. Human intervention trials observe large variation in metabolite generation and bioactivity with broccoli sprout consumption across individuals. We hypothesize that interactions between pre-intervention diet and personalized gut microbiome composition contribute to this variation. This exploratory analysis leverages a small existing dataset to test novel mediation pathways, with the goal of identifying associations for future validation in larger, prospectively designed studies. In a trial of 38 healthy adults, we analyzed participant-recorded 7-day food diaries, profiled baseline gut microbiome compositions, and quantified urinary SFN metabolites over 72 h after broccoli sprout consumption. Using regression-based mediation analysis, we modeled two complementary predictions: (1) that specific gut bacterial genera mediate how pre-intervention diet composition influences SFN metabolism, and (2) that particular dietary components mediate how gut microbiome composition influences SFN metabolism. These analyses found that seven genera, including