Acute increases in serum colonic short-chain fatty acids elicited by inulin do not increase GLP-1 or PYY responses but may reduce ghrelin in lean and overweight humans

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Ghrelin.

To determine the effects of inulin (IN) and resistant starch (RS) on postprandial SCFA, and gut hormone (glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1), peptide-tyrosine-tyrosine (PYY) and ghrelin) responses in healthy overweight/obese (OWO) vs lean (LN) humans.

Why It Was Studied

Colonic fermentation of dietary fibre to short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) influences appetite hormone secretion in animals, but SCFA production is excessive in obese animals.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, single-blind and crossover study.

Because people in this Ghrelin study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Only one side, usually the participants, was kept unaware of whether Ghrelin was given.

In the crossover set-up each of the participants took both Ghrelin and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

Blood for appetite hormones and SCFA was collected at intervals over 6 h.

A standard lunch was served 4 h after the test drink.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Appetite Depressants, Body Mass Index, Fatty Acids, Volatile, Fermentation, Gastrointestinal Microbiome, Ghrelin and Glucagon-Like Peptide 1.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, single-blind and crossover study of Ghrelin.

Its findings take up roughly 7 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2017 (European journal of clinical nutrition), a journal based in England.

More context: the Ghrelin compound page, all human trials.