Aging and Gut Dysbiosis

Aging is a complex phenomenon, driven by tangled interactions between biotic and environmental factors. In recent decades, mounting scientific evidence has laid the gut microbiome at the core of many age-related changes, including susceptibility to cardiometabolic diseases and immune system dysregulation. The gut microbiome undergoes considerable compositional and functional changes across the lifespan, and aging-related processes may be responsible for – and due to – its alteration in elderhood. In people who achieved successful aging (i.e., centenarians and semi-supercentenarians), peculiar microbial signatures have been detected, hinting the ability of the gut microbiome to adapt to aging-related stresses, improving overall host health. This book chapter aims to describe the gut microbiome in aging and successful aging, focusing on its close relationship with onset and progression or vice versa protection from aging-related diseases, especially cardiometabolic ones. Finally, readers will find a broad description of microbiota-derived metabolites affecting health status during aging, on the thin ice that is the fragile microbiota-host homeostasis in the last stages of life.