Dietary nutrition and gut microflora: A promising target for treating diseases

Background: The human gastrointestinal tract harbors hundreds of millions of microorganisms, which create a unique environment for each individual. The relationship between gut microflora and human health is being increasingly recognized, and the influence of gut microbiota on the host is well characterized, including maintenance of the body's energy metabolism and immune system. Gut microbiota have been found to be closely linked to obesity, allergy, diabetes, cancer or even some mental diseases. Diet can strongly affect human health, partly by modulating gut microbial composition and quantity. Scope and Approach: In this review, the relationship between diseases and gut microbes and the effect of different dietary components on gut microflora are summarized. This paper mainly focused on how different diet structure such as high intake of dietary fiber, fat, protein and alcohol etc. may exert impact on specific diseases via gut microflora. Key findings and conclusions: Specific diseases can be strongly affected by gut microflora and dietary nutrition plays an important role in affecting the composition of gut microflora for individuals since their birth. A bridge between diets and multiple diseases via gut microbiota is built in this review, hopefully to provide references for further investigation of how the diets affect human health via gut microflora and for development of functional foods targeting on gut microflora to solve some health problems.