PR002987 (Project)

Description:This project investigates the microbial and metabolic heterogeneity of pediatric obesity through an integrated multi-omics design. The overall objective is to identify gut bacterial, fungal, and circulating metabolomic signatures associated with metabolically healthy obesity (MHO) and metabolically unhealthy obesity (MUO), and to explore whether key biological features linked to metabolic abnormality are modifiable after short-term lifestyle intervention. The study includes two metabolomics components within the same project. One is a cross-sectional comparison of serum metabolomic profiles between children with different metabolic obesity phenotypes, particularly MHO and MUO. The other is a short-term intervention study evaluating changes in obesity-related biological signatures before and after lifestyle intervention in children with obesity. These nested studies are part of the same manuscript and should be treated as a single project. Overall, the project identified distinct gut bacterial microbiota, gut mycobiota, and circulating metabolite signatures associated with metabolic heterogeneity in pediatric obesity. In the cross-sectional analyses, MUO was characterized by altered microbial composition and differential serum metabolites mainly involving amino acids, acylcarnitines, bile acids, and lysophospholipids. In the intervention component, short-term lifestyle modification was associated with improvement in metabolic parameters and shifts in microbial and metabolomic features. Together, these findings suggest that microbial and metabolomic abnormalities linked to metabolic dysfunction in pediatric obesity may be biologically meaningful and at least partially modifiable.