Your Gut Bacteria May Predict How Fast Your Arteries Age, Study of 2,446 Finds

If you've ever wondered whether the bacteria living in your gut have anything to do with how well your arteries are holding up, a new study out of Amsterdam offers some of the most specific evidence yet. Researchers profiled the gut microbiota (the community of bacteria that lives in the digestive tract) of 2,446 adults and compared it against three separate measures of vascular ageing, the stiffening and functional decline of blood vessels that raises the long-term risk of high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke. A handful of specific bacterial groups tracked consistently with either healthier or poorer vascular numbers, and the pattern looked different depending on a person's ethnic background. It's not proof that your gut bacteria control your vascular age, but it's one of the largest and most ethnically diverse looks at that question to date.

Key takeaways:

• Higher levels of Faecalibacterium, Bacteroides, and Ruminococcaceae UCG-013 in the gut tracked with lower odds of arterial stiffness, while Streptococcus and Sutterella tracked with poorer vascular profiles.
• The findings come from 2,446 adults in Amsterdam's HELIUS cohort, using three validated measures of vascular ageing, one of the more rigorous population-level looks at gut bacteria and blood vessel health so far.
• Vascular ageing was worst among Surinamese and Ghanaian participants, suggesting gut bacteria could be one thread in the larger, still-unexplained pattern of ethnic cardiovascular disparities.
• This is a single, cross-sectional study: it shows association, not cause and effect, and it has not yet been replicated in an independent cohort.

Gut Bacteria Levels Linked to Arterial Stiffness in Large Cohort

People carrying more Faecalibacterium, Bacteroides, and Ruminococcaceae UCG-013 in their gut had measurably lower odds of arterial stiffness (a hardening and narrowing of artery walls that forces the heart to work harder), according to the new study, published in Communications Medicine. Faecalibacterium and Bacteroides each carried an odds ratio (OR, a measure of how much more or less likely an outcome is, with 1.0 meaning no difference) of 0.89 (95% confidence interval 0.81 to 0.99, and 0.81 to 0.98, respectively), while Ruminococcaceae UCG-013 came in at an OR of 0.92 (95% CI 0.84 to 0.99). In plain terms, an odds ratio of 0.89 means each of those two bacteria was associated with about 11% lower odds of arterial stiffness, while Ruminococcaceae UCG-013's odds ratio of 0.92 corresponds to roughly 8% lower odds. Coprococcus 3, Fusicatenibacter, and other members of the Ruminococcaceae and Lachnospiraceae bacterial families were also tied to better vascular profiles, though the paper did not report individual odds ratios for those groups. On the other side, Streptococcus and Sutterella were both associated with poorer vascular readings.

Why Vascular Ageing Disparities Matter for Migrant Health

Vascular ageing profiles differed substantially by ethnicity in this cohort, with Surinamese and Ghanaian participants carrying the highest vascular burden of any group studied. The researchers note that early identification of vascular ageing is particularly difficult in migrant populations, who already carry higher cardiovascular risk. The HELIUS cohort was built to capture that diversity within a single city and healthcare system: it includes adults of Dutch, Surinamese (both South Asian and African-descent), Ghanaian, Turkish and Moroccan background, which helps limit some of the confounding that makes cardiovascular comparisons across countries hard to interpret. For readers managing high blood pressure, atherosclerosis risk, or a family history of heart disease within these communities, this study adds gut bacteria to a broader body of research on the gut-heart connection that may eventually help explain why cardiovascular disease burden isn't evenly distributed.

Inside the 2,446-Person HELIUS Cohort Study

The researchers drew on baseline data from 2,446 adults enrolled in the HELIUS study (Healthy Life in an Urban Setting), an ongoing, multi-ethnic health cohort based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Gut bacteria were profiled using 16S rRNA sequencing (a DNA-based method that identifies which bacterial species are present in a stool sample), and a statistical method called ANCOM-BC2 was used to flag which bacteria differed significantly in abundance between participants with better versus worse vascular markers. Vascular ageing itself was captured with three separate, validated measurements: aortic pulse wave velocity (how fast a pressure pulse travels down the aorta, with faster speeds signaling stiffer arteries), central systolic blood pressure (blood pressure measured at the aorta itself, rather than at the arm), and augmentation index (a measure of how much pressure waves reflected back from smaller vessels add to that central pressure). The bacteria-vascular associations were then tested in regression models adjusted for sex and ethnicity.

What the Findings Mean for Managing Your Own Heart Health

For a reader who suspects their gut health is tangled up with their blood pressure or arterial stiffness, this study is a data point, not a diagnosis. Faecalibacterium in particular is already known from separate lab research for producing short chain fatty acids and other anti-inflammatory compounds relevant to cardiovascular disease, which gives the association a plausible biological story. But this study did not test whether increasing these bacteria, through diet, supplements, or any other route, would lower a person's own arterial stiffness. It only shows that people who already carried more of them tended to have better vascular numbers at a single point in time. If you have cardiovascular risk factors and you're curious about the gut-vascular connection, that's a reasonable question to raise with a doctor as an open area of research, not something to self-treat with a probiotic.

Why This Study Can't Prove Gut Bacteria Cause Healthier Arteries

This is a cross-sectional study (a design that measures everyone once, at a single point in time, rather than following people over years), so it can show that certain bacteria and certain vascular markers moved together in this Amsterdam population, but it cannot show that one caused the other. It is also a single-cohort finding, drawn only from HELIUS participants in Amsterdam, and the paper does not report an attempt to replicate the associations in an independent population.

What's Next for Gut Bacteria and Vascular Ageing Research

The study's authors frame their results as a foundation for research into microbiota-targeted strategies for cardiovascular prevention, rather than a finished answer. HELIUS is an established, actively-publishing cohort, so a longitudinal design that tracks the same participants' gut bacteria and vascular markers over time would be a logical next step to test whether these associations hold up and, eventually, whether they are causal. Broader reviews of the gut microbiome's role in cardiovascular disease describe this as an active, fast-moving research area.

Common Questions

Does this study prove gut bacteria cause faster vascular ageing?

No. It's a cross-sectional study, so it can only show that certain bacteria and vascular markers were associated with each other in this population, not that one caused the other.

Which bacteria were linked to healthier arteries in this study?

Faecalibacterium, Bacteroides, and Ruminococcaceae UCG-013 showed the clearest statistical links to lower odds of arterial stiffness, alongside Coprococcus 3, Fusicatenibacter, and other Ruminococcaceae and Lachnospiraceae family members.

Why did Surinamese and Ghanaian participants have the highest vascular burden?

The study identified this as a pattern in the data rather than explaining its cause. It's one of the open questions the researchers flag for future work.

Should I take a probiotic to protect my arteries based on this study?

No. The study did not test any supplement or dietary intervention, so it cannot tell you whether changing your gut bacteria would change your vascular health.

References

1. Juliana Alexandra Hernández Vargas, Amir Hossein Alizadeh Bahmani, Sara Beigrezaei, et al. (2026). Association between gut microbiota and vascular ageing in a multi-ethnic population in the HELIUS Study. Communications Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43856-026-01808-y
2. Marieke B Snijder, Henrike Galenkamp, Maria Prins, et al. (2017). Cohort profile: the Healthy Life in an Urban Setting (HELIUS) study in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. BMJ Open. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-017873
3. Kim Sutton-Tyrrell, Samer S. Najjar, Robert M. Boudreau, et al. (2005). Elevated Aortic Pulse Wave Velocity, a Marker of Arterial Stiffness, Predicts Cardiovascular Events in Well-Functioning Older Adults. Circulation. https://doi.org/10.1161/circulationaha.104.483628
4. Tiantian Zheng, Chenchen Meng, Zhengtian Lv, Chenxia Wu, Xinbin Zhou, Wei Mao (2025). The Critical Role of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii in Cardiovascular Diseases. Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine. https://doi.org/10.31083/rcm26740
5. Seyed Soheil Saeedi Saravi (2025). Metabolites matter for gut microbiota as a modifiable risk factor in cardiovascular diseases. Nature Reviews Cardiology. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41569-025-01193-4