The Short-Term Variation of Human Gut Mycobiome in Response to Dietary Intervention of Different Macronutrient Distributions

Abstract

While the human gut is home to a complex and diverse community of microbes, including bacteria and fungi, research on the gut microbiome has largely focused on bacteria, with relatively little attention given to the gut mycobiome. This study aims to investigate how diets with different dietary macronutrient distributions impact the gut mycobiome. We investigated gut mycobiome response to high-carbohydrate, low-fat (HC) and low-carbohydrate high-fat (LC) diet interventions based on a series of 72-day feeding-based n-of-1 clinical trials. A total of 30 participants were enrolled and underwent three sets of HC and LC dietary interventions in a randomized sequence. Each set lasted for 24 days with a 6-day washout period between dietary interventions. We collected and analyzed the fungal composition of 317 stool samples before and after each intervention period. To account for intra-individual variation across the three sets, we averaged the mycobiome data from the repeated sets for analysis. Of the 30 participants, 28 (aged 22–34 years) completed the entire intervention. Our results revealed a significant increase in gut fungal alpha diversity (p < 0.05) and significant changes in fungal composition (beta diversity, p < 0.05) after the HC dietary intervention. Specifically, we observed the enrichment of five fungal genera (Pleurotus, Kazachstania, Auricularia, Paraphaeosphaeria, Ustilaginaceae sp.; FDR < 0.052) and depletion of one fungal genus (Blumeria; FDR = 0.03) after the HC intervention. After the LC dietary intervention, one fungal genus was enriched (Ustilaginaceae sp.; FDR = 0.003), and five fungal genera were depleted (Blumeria, Agaricomycetes spp., Malassezia, Rhizopus, and Penicillium; FDR < 0.1). This study provides novel evidence on how the gut mycobiome structure and composition change in response to the HC and LC dietary interventions and reveals diet-specific changes in the fungal genera.