Microbially modified bile acids influence sleep apnea outcomes
· News-MedicalStudies in mice reveal a new target for potentially treating and preventing life-threatening cardiovascular complications in the millions of patients with sleep apnea worldwide. The study, presented at ASM Microbe 2026, showed how microbes modify bile to help protect mice from sleep apnea's heart and metabolic toll.
Obstructive sleep apnea is a widespread sleep disorder where a person's breathing repeatedly stops and starts throughout the night. This deprives the body of oxygen and builds up carbon dioxide, causing a variety of issues in the body. Previous research has shown that the lack of oxygen alters bile acids, which are compounds made by the liver, stored in the gallbladder and released in the intestines to digest fats. However, bile acids also act as chemical messengers to different receptors in the body.
In previous papers, the researchers showed that bile acids can be modified by microbes and affect how much of the fatty plaques on the heart (atherosclerosis) are present at the end of the study. Since bile acids are absorbed into the bloodstream, they can bind to receptors all over the body and cause changes in physiology.
"Our study shows that the FXR host receptor, which can be activated or deactivated by bile acids, plays a central role in driving the buildup of fatty plaques in the arteries during sleep apnea-like conditions," Allaband said. "Strikingly, when this receptor was removed from the mice, the development of arterial plaques dropped significantly in some areas and disruptions to the gut microbiome were minimized."
"These results tell us that microbially modified bile acids and how they signal through the receptor we knocked out (FXR) seem to be key to the impact of sleep apnea-like conditions in our mouse model. We also identified specific bile acids of interest to explore further," Allaband said.
The researchers are exploring several different avenues to follow up on these results, including checking human datasets to see if they can see similar trends. "We also plan to take some of our key bile acids of interest and see if supplementation of these compounds alone can help prevent or reduce disease," Allaband said. "We may also take some key microbes of interest and see if they can be given preventively as a probiotic. There is lots of exciting future work to come."
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