Dietary sterol depletion is associated with gut dysfunction in Drosophila melanogaster females

Recent findings have shown that dietary restriction (DR) may extend lifespan by improving late life gut health. Given that recent work has shown that micronutrients such as sterols can mediate the effects of macronutrient ratios on longevity, we decided to examine the effects of sterol limitation on gut health. We found that mothers fed low sterol diets both suffer from increased incidence of intestinal permeability and reduced lifespans. Moreover, epithelial cells in the anterior region of the guts of flies fed low sterol diets showed signs of dysfunction prematurely when compared to flies fed adequate sterols. These findings indicate that the relationship between gut dysfunction and death in D. melanogaster females is conditional on dietary sterol limitation and may point to different paths of physiological decline with ageing that depend on the precise nutritional composition of the diet.