In 57 Mexican children, integrated liver enzyme, fecal and serum metabolomic, and 16S gut microbiome analyses showed distinct metabolic and microbial signatures across the obesity spectrum, identifying GGT as a sensitive pediatric metabolic biomarker and pointing to SCFA, bile acid, tryptophan-indole and aromatic amino acid pathways as mechanistic links and potential therapeutic targets.
Gamma-glutamyl transferase (GGT) showed the strongest association with obesity among the liver enzymes measured.
Demographic parameters were comparable across BMI groups, which limits confounding.
Untargeted metabolomics identified large numbers of altered fecal and serum metabolites in obese vs. normal-weight children.
Specific metabolite perturbations in obesity included upregulation of kynurenine and 3-nitrotyrosine and downregulation of bile acids and purine metabolites.
16S rRNA sequencing revealed numerous differentially abundant taxa between BMI groups and greater beta-diversity dispersion in obesity.
Co-abundance network analysis showed disrupted metabolite-metabolite and taxon-taxon interactions in obesity.
Integrating microbiome and metabolome data revealed high-magnitude genus-metabolite correlations.
The study also included antimicrobial resistance assessment alongside liver enzyme profiling, metabolomics, and microbiome sequencing as part of a multi-omics design.
This study looked at 57 Mexican children, grouped as normal weight, overweight, or obese, to see how obesity relates to liver blood tests, the chemicals (metabolites) in stool and blood, and the bacteria living in the gut. The groups were similar in basic demographics, so differences are less likely to be due to age or sex. Of the liver tests, gamma-glutamyl transferase (GGT) was most clearly higher in children with obesity (about 25.5 vs. 15.0 U/L in normal-weight children), and the authors suggest it may be a more sensitive early warning sign of liver stress than the more commonly used ALT and AST. Children with obesity also had over a thousand differences in stool and blood metabolites, affecting pathways involved in amino acid handling, energy metabolism, bile acids, and purines. Gut bacteria also differed between groups, with signs of lost beneficial short-chain-fatty-acid-producing bacteria and disrupted bacterial and chemical networks. This research suggests that obesity in childhood is linked to coordinated changes in gut bacteria and body chemistry, and that GGT might be a useful marker for early metabolic stress. The study is small, particularly the overweight group (8 children), and shows correlations rather than cause and effect, so the proposed therapeutic targets would need testing in larger and longer studies.
Arredondo-Hernandez R, Orduña P, Schcolnik-Cabrera A, Castillo-Rojas G, López-Filloy M, Morales-Nava P, et al.. (2026). Integrated multi-omics analysis reveals distinct metabolic signatures and gut microbiome alterations across the pediatric obesity spectrum.. Gut microbes. https://doi.org/10.1080/19490976.2026.2755119