nutrients Article Effects of a Low-Fat Vegan Diet on Gut Microbiota in Overweight Individuals and Relationships with Body Weight, Body Composition, and Insulin Sensitivity. A Randomized Clinical Trial Hana Kahleova 1,*, Emilie Rembert 1, Jihad Alwarith 1, Willy N. Yonas 1, Andrea Tura 2, Richard Holubkov 3, Melissa Agnello 4, Robynne Chutkan 5 and Neal D. Barnard 1,6 1 Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Washington, DC 20016, USA;
[email protected] (E.R.);
[email protected] (J.A.);
[email protected] (W.N.Y.);
[email protected] (N.D.B.) 2 Metabolic Unit, CNR Institute of Neuroscience, 35127 Padua, Italy;
[email protected] 3 School of Medicine, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84132, USA;
[email protected] 4 uBiome Inc., San Francisco, CA 94103, USA;
[email protected] 5 Department of Gastroenterology, Georgetown MedStar Hospital, Washington, DC 20007, USA;
[email protected] 6 Adjunct Faculty, George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Washington, DC 20052, USA * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +1-202-527-7379 Received: 24 August 2020; Accepted: 20 September 2020; Published: 24 September 2020 Abstract: Diet modulates gut microbiota and plays an important role in human health. The aim of this study was to test the effect of a low-fat vegan diet on gut microbiota and its association with weight, body composition, and insulin resistance in overweight men and women. We enrolled 168 participants and randomly assigned them to a vegan (n = 84) or a control group (n = 84) for 16 weeks. Of these, 115 returned all gut microbiome samples.