ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition and Metabolism
Effects of Functional Dietary Fiber Supplementation Combined with Home-Based Exercise on Gut Microbiota Diversity and Low-Grade Inflammation in Urban Sedentary Adults
Provisionally accepted
- Sejong University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
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Inactivity is related to dysbiosis of the gut microbiota and low-grade chronic inflammation, but it has not been clear how both dietary fiber supplementations and exercise can affect these factors concurrently. The purpose of the current trial was to investigate the role of functional dietary fiber supplementations combined with home-based exercise in modifying the diversity of the gut microbiota and inflammation in sedentary urban adults. In this parallel-group, 24-week, randomized controlled trial, 140 sedentary adults who volunteered to participate in the trial were randomly allocated into two equally-sized groups: an intervention group who received functional dietary fiber supplementations containing 15-20g/day of resistant starch, inulin, and beta-glucan, in addition to home-based exercise consisting of five exercise sessions per week, with duration ranging from 30-45 minutes per session, versus a control group who remained in their usual lifestyle. The main study outcomes included analysis of alpha diversity of the gut microbiota based upon 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing and changes in inflammation based upon enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The alpha diversity of the microbiota increased from 3.82 ± 0.48 in the baseline period to 4.31 ± 0.49 after the interventions in the treatment group (P < 0.001) compared with trivial changes in the other group. There was remarkable reduction in high-sensitivity c-reactive protein (42.1%), interleukin-6 (35.4%), and tumor necrosis factor alpha (28.6%) in treated subjects. Butyrate in the treated subjects increased by 50%, whereas there was significant correlation between changes in alpha diversity and reduction in inflammation (r = -0.52; P < 0.001) in the treated subjects. In conclusion, combined functional dietary fiber supplementations and home-based exercise are effective in both improving alpha diversity of the microbiota and reducing inflammation in sedentary adults. This accredits the role of combined lifestyle modifications in lessening cardiometabolic risk factors.
Keywords: functional dietary fiber, Gut Microbiota diversity, home-based exercise, low-grade inflammation, sedentary behavior
Received: 17 Dec 2025; Accepted: 13 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Wang, Tao and Zhu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Mengke Zhu
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