Dr. Jeff Woods Receives Paper of the Year Recognition
AHS E-News Spring 2020
A publication by Kinesiology and Community Health professor Jeff Woods was recognized by the American College of Sports Medicine as the 2019 Paper of the Year for the journal Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews. The recognition is based on the paper’s research significance, conceptual design, and technical innovation.
“Exercise and the gut microbiome: a review of the evidence, potential mechanisms, and implications for human health” presents the results of two studies, one in mice and the other in human subjects, and offers the first definitive evidence that exercise alone can change the composition of microbes in the gut. The studies were designed to isolate exercise-induced changes from other factors that can alter intestinal microbiota, such as dietary intake and exposure to antibiotics.
In the first study, scientists transplanted fecal material from exercised and sedentary mice into the colons of sedentary germ-free mice that had been raised in a sterile facility and had no microbiota of their own. In the second study, the team tracked changes in the composition of gut microbiota in human participants as they transitioned from a sedentary lifestyle to a more active one and back again.
“These are the first studies to show that exercise can have an effect on your gut independent of diet or other factors,” said Dr. Woods, who also directs the Center on Health, Aging, and Disability in the College of Applied Health Sciences. He led the research with former doctoral student Jacob Allen, now a postdoctoral researcher at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. The mouse study was conducted at Illinois and with scientists at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who develop and maintain the germ-free mice. The work with humans was conducted at Illinois.