Endocrine Abstracts

Background: The role of gut microbiota on our health is increasingly well known. It plays a role in digestive, metabolic, immune and neurological functions. The objective of our work was to evaluate the effect of prebiotic and probiotic supplementation on the lipid profile in addition of a weight loss program.

Methods: This is an interventional study involving 45 obese patients consulting the obesity unit of the Institute of Nutrition of Tunis during the period from May to August 2022. Patients were divided into 3 groups matched for age, sex and BMI: diet alone, prebiotics (30g of carob/d) and probiotics (1 tablet of Lactibiane*/d). The lipid profile (total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), HDL-c and LDL-c) was performed at T0 and at one month after the intervention (T1).

Results: The mean age was 48.73 ±7.7 years with a female predominance (93.3% of women). There was a significant decrease in total cholesterol (-0.4 mmol/l) and LDL-cholesterol (-0.3 mmol/l) for the diet alone group between T0 and T1 (P=0.03 and 0.05 respectively). For the prebiotic group we noted a significant decrease in total cholesterol (-0.4 mmol/l), LDL-cholesterol (-0.4 mmol/l) and TG (-0.5 mmol/l) (P=0.005, P=0.003 and P= 0.001 respectively). For the probiotic group, there was a significant decrease in plasma levels of total cholesterol (-0.7 mmol/l) and triglyceride (-0.3 mmol/l) (P<0.001 and P=0.006 respectively). There was no significant improvement in HDL-c levels in the three groups. For the comparison between groups: The three groups were comparable for improvement in total cholesterol. The prebiotic and diet alone groups were comparable for improvement in LDL-c (P=0.4) and the prebiotic and probiotic groups were similar for improvement in TG (P=0.2).

Conclusion: The improvement of total cholesterol and LDL-c was not related to the use of symbiotics. On the other hand, the use of symbiotics seems to improve triglyceride levels with a comparable effect for prebiotics and probiotics.