Figure 4.

Pathway linking meat servings in the diet with gut microbiome, immune response and blood metabolome. (a) Higher meat serving is negatively correlated with relative abundances of B. thetaiotaomicron, a fibre digesting bacterium. The latter is negatively correlated with proportions of Th17 cells. Increased Th17 cells are positively correlated with methyl donor S-adenosyl-L-methionine (SAM) that is a metabolic product from methionine, an amino acid enriched in meat. SAM was negatively correlated with B. thetaiotaomicron. (b) Correlation between blood metabolites and B. thetaiotaomicron, meat serving and Th17 cells. Pearson correlations were performed between B. thetaiotaomicron, meat servings and Th17 cells and all blood metabolites from MS and controls, with 306 significant correlations between metabolites and B. thetaiotaomicron, 575 between metabolites and meat servings, and 369 between metabolites and Th17 cells. There are 5 metabolites correlated with all three type of measures.