Justine Huart Awarded the Alvarenga de Piauhy Prize Medal of the Royal Academy of Medicine
Justine Huart is a researcher at the Laboratory of Translational Research in Nephrology at ULiège and a nephrologist at the University Hospital of Liège. Her work on the relationship between the gut microbiota and blood pressure, conducted as part of her doctoral thesis, has just been honored with the Alvarenga de Piauhy Prize Medal awarded by the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium.
H
ypertension is a condition affecting a large proportion of the adult population, yet its underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. In her doctoral thesis, Justine Huart chose to investigate an unexpected factor: the gut microbiota. Her research rapidly confirmed an association between blood pressure levels and microbiota composition, since intestinal bacteria produce various metabolites that circulate throughout the body. Among these are short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) - acetate, butyrate, and propionate - generated during the fermentation of dietary fibers. The study reveals that hypertensive individuals exhibit higher concentrations of these SCFAs in their stools.
Huart also examined blood pressure profiles during sleep. Normally, blood pressure decreases at night. In certain patients, however - so-called “non-dippers” - this decrease does not occur, thereby increasing cardiovascular risk. “In these individuals, analyses also revealed higher levels of SCFAs without any major change in microbiota composition,” explains the researcher. “This finding suggests that it is the metabolites produced by bacteria, rather than the bacterial composition itself, that may influence blood pressure regulation.”
To refine her observations, Huart conducted a five-year follow-up of patients and their partners. She observed that, even after several years, the association between blood pressure and SCFA levels in stools remained strong, while the overall composition of the microbiota did not significantly change.
These results shed new light on hypertension: it may not be microbial diversity per se, but rather microbial metabolic activity, that plays a decisive role. Such discoveries open promising avenues for the prevention and treatment of hypertension, for instance, through dietary interventions and microbiota modulation.
Justine Huart is now continuing her research within the framework of a postdoctoral fellowship from the F.R.S.-FNRS, at the Nephrology Department of the CHU de Liège and the Laboratory of Translational Research in Nephrology (GIGA), under the supervision of Prof. François Jouret, with the aim of further elucidating the mechanisms linking the microbiota, the intestinal mucosa, and blood pressure.
