Pilot study examines how disrupted eating patterns may fuel chronic inflammation
A new pilot project, funded by the Texas Medical Center Digestive Diseases Center Pilot Feasibility Award, explores how lifestyle habits tied to the body’s internal clock may shape gut health and influence the development of age-related disease.
Led by Xiangsheng Huang, PhD, assistant professor in the Gastroenterology Research Center at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, the research aims to uncover how circadian disruption and alcohol exposure alter the gut microbiome and contribute to chronic inflammation linked to metabolic and cardiovascular conditions.
The Texas Medical Center Digestive Diseases Center supports pilot/feasibility projects in the area of GI-related research each year. These funds specifically support projects related to the center’s theme, “Molecular mechanisms and outcomes of injury, infection, or metabolic dysfunction of the digestive system.” Subthemes center on infection, injury, and metabolism.
“Receiving the Texas Medical Center Digestive Disease Center Pilot Feasibility Award is a tremendous honor that validates our efforts at the Gastroenterology Research Center to connect circadian biology with gut health,” Huang said. “Inflammaging, which is the persistent, low-grade inflammation driving so many age-related diseases, is one of the most important yet underappreciated problems in modern medicine.”
Huang’s project will study how disruptions to the body’s internal clock, combined with alcohol consumption, may accelerate aging-related inflammation and contribute to chronic disease. The study focuses on inflammaging, a persistent, low-level inflammation associated with conditions such as metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and dementia. Huang says a major contributor to this process is the breakdown of the intestinal barrier, which is closely tied to the health of gut bacteria.
The research team found that eating out of sync with normal circadian rhythms can significantly disrupt beneficial gut microbes, particularly when paired with alcohol use. Those disruptions reduce the production of protective compounds known as short-chain fatty acids, metabolites that help strengthen the gut barrier and limit inflammation.
With the new funding, Huang aims to better understand how these lifestyle factors interact to drive gut-related inflammation and identify potential interventions that could help slow the progression of aging-associate diseases.
“This award gives us the opportunity to rigorously investigate how daily lifestyle factors, such as meal timing and alcohol consumption, disrupt the gut microbiome and trigger this inflammatory process,” Huang said. “Ultimately, this support accelerates our goal of identifying therapeutic targets to prevent chronic inflammation and improve metabolic outcomes.”