Intestinal Microbiota And Host Metabolism - A Complex Relationship

In the current issue of Acta Physiologica, Lundberg and co-workers publish a paper entitled \"Germ-free mice are not protected against diet-induced obesity and metabolic dysfunction\" in which the authors show that feeding a Western diet to both conventionally raised and germ-free mice results in weight gain, increased fat mass, fatty liver, glucose intolerance and adipose tissue inflammation1 . This indicates that development of obesity and components of the metabolic syndrome is not dependent on the presence of gut microbiota and adds to the ongoing discussion regarding the causal role of intestinal microbiota in the development of obesity.