Comparative study between the effects of aged and fresh Chinese baijiu on gut microbiota and host metabolism

Aging is an essential part for production of the most distilled spirits. Aged spirits smell and taste more harmonious and commonly have higher antioxidant capacity in vitro than fresh spirits. However, it is unclear how aged spirits influence intestinal microbiota and host metabolism, which play important role in the development and progression of alcoholic liver disease (ALD). Baijiu is a traditional Chinese alcoholic beverage. Freshly distilled baijiu needs to be aged for at least 1 year. Here, we built an animal model through oral gavage by fresh baijiu, 10-year-old baijiu, 20-year-old baijiu, ethanol and water. Our results showed that mice treated with aged baijiu had lower degrees of liver injury than that of fresh baijiu as revealed by the phenotypic, biochemical and histologic analyses. In addition, significant different gut microbiota structures were observed between mice treated with aged baijiu and fresh baijiu. Further co-occurrence network showed that the aged baijiu groups had more complex microbial interaction than fresh baijiu group. By metabolomics, we observed aged baijiu and fresh baijiu intervention resulted in distinct serum metabolome. Sixty-four metabolites showed significant alteration among different interventions. Further metabolic pathway analysis based on these differential metabolites revealed 7 pathways were significantly impacted. A total of 13 metabolites were involved in these pathways, including 8 amino acids, 4 organic acids and 1 carbohydrate. Our results filled the gap of how aged spirits affect gut microbiota and host metabolism and provided supporting evidence that the aged spirits may have less effect on liver than fresh spirits.