Modified Mediterranean Diet, Gut Microbial Diversity and Host Resilience

The Mediterranean diet is one of the most extensively studied dietary patterns for human health. Targeted modifications, such as enrichment with high quality prebiotic fibres, offer a promising way to shape the gut microbiota and its functional output. How these diet driven microbial changes translate into concrete outcomes for the host is still only partly understood.This Research Topic follows a single axis: what a modified Mediterranean diet does to the gut microbiota, and what those microbial changes then do to the host. We focus on host resilience, meaning the capacity to withstand and recover from physiological stressors such as cancer treatment, ageing and chronic inflammation. Outcomes of interest include treatment tolerance, nutritional status, muscle mass and function, frailty and systemic inflammation. We are equally interested in the mechanisms that connect Mediterranean diet components to microbial diversity and function, and in the omics approaches, such as metagenomics, metatranscriptomics and metabolomics, that make those mechanisms measurable.We welcome mechanistic, preclinical, clinical and observational studies that link a modified Mediterranean diet to changes in the gut microbiota and to measurable host outcomes. Work that positions the modified Mediterranean diet as a microbiota targeted backbone for precision nutrition is also welcome. Original research, reviews, systematic reviews, perspectives and methods articles are all welcome.Themes:• Effects of a modified Mediterranean diet, including prebiotic fibre enrichment, on gut microbial diversity, composition and function• Multi omics approaches, including metagenomics, metatranscriptomics and metabolomics, to uncover how Mediterranean diet components shape microbial activity and host pathways• Microbiota mediated effects of a modified Mediterranean diet on host immune and metabolic responses and systemic inflammation• Modified Mediterranean diet, gut microbiota and nutritional status, sarcopenia and frailty in ageing and clinical populations• Modified Mediterranean diet and microbiota modulation during cancer treatment, including treatment related side effects, treatment tolerance and nutritional status Topic editors: Salvatore Artale, Rebecca De Lorenzo, Clarissa Consolandi Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/85998/modified-mediterranean-diet-gut-microbial-diversity-and-host-resilience