Skip to main content

This is a preprint.

It has not yet been peer reviewed by a journal.

The National Library of Medicine is running a pilot to include preprints that result from research funded by NIH in PMC and PubMed.

bioRxiv logoLink to bioRxiv
[Preprint]. 2026 Apr 1:2026.03.30.715124. [Version 1] doi: 10.64898/2026.03.30.715124

Impact of high-fat Western diet on chronic lymphocytic leukemia disease progression and gut microbiome profile in Eμ-TCL1 mice

Sydney A Skupa, Jordan B Hernandez, Audrey L Smith, Erin M Drengler, Anand K Seth, Shesh N Rai, Jonathan B Clayton, Christopher R D'Angelo, Dalia El-Gamal
PMCID: PMC13060140  PMID: 41959214

Abstract

Background: The composition and function of the gut microbiome have been shown to contribute to both health and disease. One of the most powerful modulators of microbial composition and function is diet. Materials & Methods: Using the Eμ-TCL1 murine model of B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), we assigned male and female mice to a high-fat, high-carbohydrate Western diet (HF) or standard chow (CH) diet. Results: Mice consuming a HF diet had significantly shorter survival than those consuming a CH diet, irrespective of sex, with female mice exhibiting particularly poor outcomes. We also observed a significant increase in splenic involvement by CLL in the HF diet-fed mice at time of sacrifice. Mice receiving the HF diet demonstrated immediate and profound effects on the gut microbiome, marked by reduced alpha diversity and significantly different community composition as measured by beta diversity. Notably, there was a sustained increase in Akkermansia muciniphila and Bacteroidetes thetaiotaomicron in HF diet-fed mice, coupled with a corresponding increase in microbiome functional pathways related to arginine and histidine biosynthesis, chitin degradation, and nucleotide biosynthesis. Discussion: Collectively our data provides evidence of the profound and sustained impact of a high-fat Western diet upon the gut microbiome community and CLL pathogenesis in the Eμ-TCL1 murine model of CLL.

Full Text Availability

The license terms selected by the author(s) for this preprint version do not permit archiving in PMC. The full text is available from the preprint server.


Articles from bioRxiv are provided here courtesy of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Preprints

RESOURCES