Akkermansia: The ‘Next-Generation Probiotic’: What Human Data Show

Scroll through any wellness feed this year and you will meet the same confident claim: a gut bacterium that ‘tells your body to make its own GLP-1’, the hormone behind the blockbuster injectable weight-loss medicines. The microbe in question is Akkermansia muciniphila, and as of early 2025 it has moved from microbiology journals to supplement shelves, podcast interviews and short videos promising a thinner waist with no prescription.

The timing is not accidental. Interest in GLP-1 medicines has made anything labeled a ‘natural’ alternative irresistible, and pasteurized akkermansia products, cleared as a novel food in the European Union in 2021 and sold as dietary supplements in the United States, now carry marketing that leans hard on a handful of studies.

So it is worth slowing down. Some of the science behind akkermansia is genuinely interesting. Most of it was done in mice. The human part fits on a single page, and that page is what this article is about.

What is Akkermansia, and where does it come from?

Akkermansia muciniphila was first grown in a laboratory in 2004 by researchers in the Netherlands, who isolated it from a human stool sample and named it after the microbiologist Antoon Akkermans. The second half of the name is the clue to its lifestyle: ‘muciniphila’ means mucin-loving. Mucin is the gel-like protein that lines the intestinal wall and forms the mucus layer separating gut bacteria from the body’s own cells.

Unlike the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium species in yogurt, akkermansia belongs to an entirely different branch of bacterial life, the phylum Verrucomicrobia. In healthy adults it typically accounts for roughly 1 to 4 percent of all gut bacteria, which makes it a minor player by headcount but a major one by location. It lives in the mucus itself, right at the interface where immune cells and gut lining cells are listening.

So where does it come from in you? Infants acquire it in the first year of life, most likely from the mother and the environment, and levels rise through childhood. Nobody acquires it from food in any meaningful way. It does not grow in fermented dairy, it dies quickly in oxygen, and it has not been found in vegetables or sauerkraut. If it is in your gut, you have been carrying it, and quietly feeding it, for decades.

That feeding is the interesting part. Akkermansia eats the mucus you make, and in return it appears to stimulate the gut to make more. Observational studies have consistently found lower levels in people with obesity, type 2 diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease, and higher levels in lean, metabolically healthy adults. Whether that is cause, effect or coincidence is the question the rest of this article tries to answer honestly.

What changed recently in Akkermansia research

The story has three dated turning points, and knowing them helps you judge what a label is really leaning on.

The first came in 2013, when a Belgian team led by Patrice Cani published in PNAS that feeding live akkermansia to mice on a high-fat diet reversed weight gain, reduced fat mass and improved blood glucose, while thickening the gut mucus layer. That paper put the microbe on the map.

The second came in 2017, when the same group reported in Nature Medicine that killing the bacterium with gentle heat, a process called pasteurization, did not destroy the effect. In mice it worked at least as well as the live organism, and a single protein on the bacterium’s outer membrane, called Amuc_1100, reproduced much of the benefit on its own. That finding is the reason most products you see today contain heat-treated rather than live cells.

The third, and still the only one that matters for humans, came in July 2019. The group published a proof-of-concept randomized, placebo-controlled trial in Nature Medicine in which 40 adults with overweight or obesity and insulin resistance took live akkermansia, pasteurized akkermansia or placebo for three months; 32 completed the study. The pasteurized group showed better insulin sensitivity, lower fasting insulin and lower total cholesterol compared with placebo, with no serious safety signals.

Since then, regulatory rather than clinical milestones have driven the headlines: pasteurized akkermansia was assessed as safe and authorized as a novel food in the European Union in 2021, and a growing number of supplement makers in the United States have brought it to market as a dietary ingredient. The clinical trial count, meanwhile, has barely moved.

How Akkermansia works: the mucus layer explained

Picture the gut lining as a cobblestone street under a layer of fresh snow. The cobblestones are your intestinal cells, the snow is mucus, and the trillions of bacteria in the gut are supposed to stay on top of the snow. When the layer thins, bacterial fragments brush against the street, and the immune cells living there respond with low-grade inflammation.

One of those fragments is lipopolysaccharide, usually shortened to LPS, a molecule from the outer wall of many gut bacteria. In mice fed a high-fat diet, LPS leaks into the bloodstream and drives what researchers call metabolic endotoxemia: a chronic, smoldering inflammation linked to insulin resistance, the state in which cells stop responding well to insulin and blood glucose rises.

Akkermansia appears to intervene at the snow layer. Although it eats mucin, it also signals the goblet cells that produce mucus to make more, and in the mouse studies the net result was a thicker, not thinner, barrier. The Amuc_1100 protein on its surface binds to an immune receptor called Toll-like receptor 2 on gut cells, which seems to tighten the junctions between those cells and reduce leakage of LPS.

Two further mechanisms are often cited. The bacterium ferments mucin into short-chain fatty acids such as propionate and acetate, which neighboring bacteria and gut cells can use as fuel and signaling molecules. And in rodent studies, akkermansia or its products increased the release of GLP-1, a hormone made by gut cells after meals that slows stomach emptying, improves insulin release and promotes fullness. That last point is where the viral claims come from, and it is worth stressing that this GLP-1 effect has been shown in rodents and cell cultures, not as a measured outcome in people.

Akkermansia and metabolic health: what the mouse studies found

The animal literature on akkermansia is large, consistent and, frankly, impressive. It is also the easiest place to be misled, so a plain summary helps.

In the 2013 experiments, obese mice given daily live akkermansia for four weeks gained roughly half as much fat as untreated obese mice, their blood LPS levels fell, their fasting glucose improved, and their mucus layer thickened measurably under the microscope. Prebiotic fibers that fed the bacterium produced a similar pattern.

The 2017 work added a crucial twist. Pasteurized bacteria, no longer alive and unable to colonize, reduced fat gain and improved glucose tolerance in mice even more than live cells did. A purified dose of the Amuc_1100 protein alone, given by mouth, reproduced a good share of the benefit. That is a strong hint that the effect comes from a molecular signal rather than from a living organism setting up house in the gut.

Since then, mouse studies have linked akkermansia or its products to lower liver fat, improved cholesterol handling, better response to certain cancer immunotherapies, reduced alcohol-related liver injury, and healthier aging in a mouse model of progeria. Each of those is a separate claim with its own, usually single, study behind it.

Here is the honest caveat. Mice on a laboratory high-fat diet are a model, not a person. They are genetically identical, live in sterile cages, eat one food, and their gut microbiome differs from ours in composition and in how it responds to intervention. Dozens of microbes that transformed mouse metabolism have gone nowhere in people. Animal data make a case for running human trials; they do not substitute for them.

What the evidence actually says about Akkermansia in humans

Strip the marketing away and the human evidence for akkermansia supplements is one small randomized trial, one mixed-strain trial, and a stack of observational studies showing that people with certain conditions tend to carry less of it. Grading that evidence is more useful than summarizing it.

Claim	Best human evidence	Strength
Improves insulin sensitivity	One randomized placebo-controlled trial, 32 adults completed, 3 months (2019)	Low: single small trial, exploratory endpoints
Lowers cholesterol	Same 2019 trial, total cholesterol fell about 9 percent versus placebo	Low
Weight loss	Same trial; weight change was small and not statistically significant	Very low
Better glucose control in type 2 diabetes	One 12-week randomized trial of a five-strain product including akkermansia, 76 participants (2020)	Low: cannot isolate akkermansia’s contribution
Brain or memory protection	Animal models and observational associations only	Very low / preclinical
Short-term safety	2019 trial plus EU novel food assessment (2021)	Moderate for 3 months; longer term unknown

A randomized controlled trial, in which participants are assigned by chance to treatment or placebo, is the strongest design for proving cause and effect. The 2019 study was exactly that, but it was designed to test safety and feasibility first and metabolic effects second, and with roughly ten people per group even striking results carry wide uncertainty. In evidence-grading language, it generates a hypothesis worth confirming rather than a result worth prescribing on.

Observational studies, which simply measure akkermansia levels in groups of people, are weaker still for causation. They tell us low akkermansia travels with obesity and diabetes; they cannot tell us whether raising it would change anything. Larger, longer trials are reportedly underway, and until they publish, the honest position is cautious interest.

Is Akkermansia a weight loss probiotic?

This is the question behind most searches, so it deserves a direct answer: not on current human evidence.

In the 2019 trial, participants taking pasteurized akkermansia lost on average a little over two kilograms more than the placebo group over three months, and trimmed slightly more fat mass and hip circumference. Those numbers sound encouraging until you read the statistics. The difference did not reach significance, which means the study could not rule out chance as the explanation. The authors themselves described the weight findings as exploratory and called for larger studies.

Compare that with what weight management evidence usually requires. Lifestyle programs, medicines and surgery are judged on trials lasting a year or more, with hundreds or thousands of participants, and with weight as the primary outcome. Akkermansia has none of that. The 2020 five-strain trial in people with type 2 diabetes did not find a meaningful weight difference either.

Why, then, do so many products imply otherwise? Partly because the mouse data were striking, and partly because the GLP-1 mechanism offers a tidy story. Gut cells releasing more GLP-1 is a plausible route to feeling fuller, but no human trial has yet measured appetite, food intake or GLP-1 levels as a result of taking akkermansia.

There is a more useful way to think about this microbe. The 2019 improvements in insulin sensitivity and cholesterol happened largely without weight loss, which, if confirmed, would mean akkermansia affects metabolism directly rather than through the scale. That is scientifically more interesting than a weight-loss pill and far less marketable, which may explain the gap between the research and the advertising.

Live or pasteurized: are Akkermansia supplements probiotics or postbiotics?

Here is a detail that surprises most readers: the best-studied akkermansia product is dead on arrival, by design.

A probiotic is defined as a live microorganism that confers a health benefit when consumed in adequate amounts. A postbiotic is a preparation of inactivated microorganisms, or their components, that confers a health benefit. Pasteurized akkermansia, heated to around 70 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes, fits the second definition. Calling it a ‘next-generation probiotic’ is common shorthand, but strictly speaking most commercial akkermansia is a postbiotic.

That distinction matters for three practical reasons. First, the heat-treated form is what showed metabolic effects in the 2019 human trial; the live form in that same study produced weaker, mostly non-significant changes. Second, akkermansia is a strict anaerobe that dies in oxygen within hours, so keeping it alive through manufacturing, shipping and a stomach full of acid is technically difficult and raises questions about what is actually in a live-labeled capsule. Third, inactivated cells cannot colonize or overgrow, which simplifies the safety picture for people whose clinicians worry about live bacteria.

Postbiotics also challenge a common assumption about gut health: that the goal is always to add living residents. For akkermansia, the working theory is that the Amuc_1100 protein and other cell-wall components send a signal to the gut lining regardless of whether the bacterium survives. If that holds up, the value lies in the message, not the messenger.

None of this means live products are useless or pasteurized ones are proven. It means a careful reader should check which form a study used before accepting that its results apply to the bottle in hand, and should know that labels using ‘probiotic’ for a heat-killed product are using the word loosely.

Can Akkermansia protect the brain or memory?

Headlines about akkermansia protecting cognition have multiplied, so let us be exact about what sits beneath them.

The gut-brain axis, meaning the two-way communication between the digestive tract and the nervous system through nerves, hormones and immune signals, is a legitimate research field. Within it, akkermansia has drawn interest for two reasons: its anti-inflammatory signaling in the gut, and the short-chain fatty acids it helps produce, some of which influence the blood-brain barrier and brain immune cells in animal studies.

In mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease, supplementing akkermansia has been reported to reduce amyloid deposits and improve performance on maze tests. In mouse models of alcohol exposure and of high-fat feeding, it has been linked to better memory scores. These are real published findings, and every one of them is in rodents.

The human data are observational and, interestingly, point in more than one direction. Several studies have found lower akkermansia in people with cognitive impairment or on Western-style diets. Others have found higher levels in people with multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease compared with healthy controls. Researchers are not sure whether that reflects a cause, a consequence of altered gut motility and diet in those conditions, or an attempt by the gut to compensate. It is a reminder that ‘more’ of a bacterium is not automatically ‘better’.

No randomized trial has tested akkermansia for memory, mood or dementia risk in people. Anyone noticing memory changes should treat that as a reason to see a clinician for assessment, not as a reason to try a supplement, because treatable causes such as thyroid disease, vitamin B12 deficiency, depression and medication effects are common and easy to miss.

Which probiotics contain Akkermansia muciniphila?

Searches for products are the natural next step, and the honest answer is that akkermansia appears in three kinds of supplement, none of which this article will name by brand.

The first is single-ingredient pasteurized akkermansia, the form studied in 2019 and authorized as a novel food in the European Union. Labels on these products often say ‘pasteurized’ or ‘heat-inactivated’ and give a cell count rather than colony-forming units, because dead cells cannot form colonies.

The second is live akkermansia, sold mainly in the United States as a dietary supplement. Because the bacterium is so sensitive to oxygen, these products rely on specialized encapsulation and sometimes refrigeration. Whether the stated number of live cells is still alive at the time you swallow it is rarely verified independently.

The third is multi-strain blends that include akkermansia alongside other species such as Clostridium butyricum, Bifidobacterium infantis or Anaerobutyricum. The 2020 type 2 diabetes trial used a formulation of this kind. With blends, no one can say which strain, if any, produced an observed effect.

Whatever the format, a few evidence-minded checks apply. Look for the full strain designation, not just the species name, since different strains of the same species can behave differently. Favor products that state the form used in human trials. Treat any label promising weight loss, ‘natural GLP-1’ or a specific metabolic result as going beyond the evidence, because US supplement regulations do not require proof of efficacy before sale and these products are not approved to treat, prevent or diagnose any condition.

Finally, remember that a supplement choice is a medical conversation if you take prescription medicines or have a health condition. Your pharmacist or prescribing clinician can judge interactions and relevance in a way no label can.

Is Akkermansia hard on the liver? Safety and side effects

The liver question comes up often, perhaps because supplements in general have earned a reputation for occasional liver harm, and because akkermansia marketing frequently mentions fatty liver. The data available point the other way, with heavy caveats about how little data there are.

In the 2019 trial, blood markers of liver stress such as gamma-glutamyl transferase and aspartate aminotransferase fell modestly in the pasteurized akkermansia group relative to placebo, as did markers of inflammation. No participant had a serious adverse event attributed to the supplement, and reported side effects were no more frequent than with placebo. In animal studies, akkermansia reduced rather than increased liver fat and alcohol-related liver injury.

The European safety assessment that preceded novel food authorization in 2021 reviewed toxicology data, including studies in animals at high intake, and concluded that pasteurized akkermansia was safe for the proposed use in adults. That is a meaningful endorsement for a food ingredient. It is not a clinical trial in people with liver disease.

What has not been studied is what matters most for a cautious reader: safety beyond three months, safety in people with existing liver disease, safety in those taking multiple medicines, and safety of live products whose manufacturing varies. Any supplement can be contaminated or mislabeled, and liver injury from supplements usually comes from undisclosed ingredients or adulterants rather than from the headline ingredient.

Commonly reported side effects of akkermansia products, drawn from trial reports and consumer accounts, are mild and digestive: bloating, gas, changes in stool pattern and occasional nausea, typically settling within the first weeks. None of these have been systematically quantified in large studies. If you have liver disease or abnormal liver tests, the decision to take akkermansia belongs with the clinician managing that condition.

Who should not take Akkermansia probiotics?

No official guideline lists contraindications for akkermansia specifically, so this section applies the general principles that NIH and NHS guidance set out for probiotic and postbiotic products, plus the specific gaps in akkermansia data.

Groups for whom caution is strongest include people with weakened immune systems from chemotherapy, organ transplant medicines, advanced HIV or high-dose steroids, because live bacterial supplements have, rarely, caused bloodstream infections in such patients. Pasteurized products carry less of this theoretical risk, but the data are thin. People who are critically ill, have a central venous catheter, or have recently had major abdominal surgery fall into the same category.

Anyone with a damaged or inflamed gut lining, including active ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, or short bowel syndrome, should not add any bacterial product without their gastroenterologist’s input. Akkermansia feeds on mucus, and while studies suggest it stimulates mucus production, no trial has tested it when the barrier is already compromised by disease.

Pregnant and breastfeeding women, children and adolescents were excluded from the human trial and from the European novel food authorization, which covers adults only. There is simply no safety information for these groups.

People living with diabetes who take glucose-lowering medicines deserve a specific mention. If akkermansia does improve insulin sensitivity as the small trial suggested, adding it without telling the prescriber could in theory lower glucose further than expected. That is a reason to involve the clinician, not a reason to adjust any medicine on your own.

Lastly, anyone with a history of allergic reactions to supplement excipients should read ingredient lists carefully, since capsules and fillers vary. When in doubt, the conversation with a pharmacist or prescriber comes before the purchase, and never after a problem appears.

Can you increase Akkermansia naturally through diet?

The quieter and better-supported route to more akkermansia runs through the kitchen rather than the capsule, though here too the evidence is mostly from animals and small human observations.

Polyphenols, the bitter and colorful plant compounds in cranberries, grapes, pomegranates, green tea and cocoa, are the most studied. In mice, cranberry and grape extracts increased akkermansia markedly while improving metabolic markers. In humans, a few small trials of polyphenol-rich foods have reported increases in akkermansia, although inconsistently and in people eating otherwise varied diets.

Dietary fiber matters in a less direct way. Akkermansia does not eat most fibers itself, but fermentable fibers such as inulin from chicory, onions and garlic feed neighboring bacteria whose byproducts and competition appear to favor it. In the original 2013 mouse work, a prebiotic fiber raised akkermansia roughly a hundredfold.

Patterns of eating may count too. Observational and small interventional studies link time-restricted eating, calorie restriction and a Mediterranean-style diet with higher akkermansia, possibly because periods without food give the bacterium exclusive access to its mucus meal. Omega-3 fatty acids from oily fish have shown a similar association in a small human study.

One of the most robust findings is pharmacological rather than dietary: metformin, a first-line medicine for type 2 diabetes, consistently raises akkermansia in people who take it, and some researchers suspect that part of metformin’s benefit runs through the gut. That is an observation about an existing prescription, not an invitation to seek the medicine for its microbiome effects.

What does not work: eating yogurt, kefir or sauerkraut for akkermansia. It is not in them. And a diet high in saturated fat and low in plants reliably lowers it, in mice and in humans, which is the most consistent dietary finding of all.

Common myths about Akkermansia

Viral health claims tend to contain a seed of truth wrapped in several layers of extrapolation. Peeling the akkermansia versions apart is worth a few minutes.

‘Akkermansia is a natural GLP-1 medicine.’ The seed: in rodents and gut-cell cultures, akkermansia components increase GLP-1 release. The extrapolation: no human study has measured GLP-1, appetite or food intake after taking it, and GLP-1 medicines produce drug-level hormone activity that a bacterium’s modest signal does not approach. The two are not comparable, and no supplement is a substitute for a prescribed medicine.

‘It is a proven weight-loss probiotic.’ One small trial, weight change not statistically significant. That is the entire human record.

‘More akkermansia is always better.’ Levels are higher in some neurological conditions than in healthy controls, for reasons nobody fully understands. Ecology is about balance, not maximization.

‘You can get it from fermented foods.’ Akkermansia does not survive in fermented foods and has never been found in them. Dietary polyphenols and fiber may help your own population grow; a jar of pickles will not add new residents.

‘A probiotic has to be alive to work.’ For this microbe, the heat-killed postbiotic form performed better in the only human trial. The signal appears to come from cell-wall proteins, not from colonization.

‘If it is sold, it has been tested on people like me.’ Human testing covered adults with overweight and insulin resistance for three months, and adults with type 2 diabetes in a blend for twelve weeks. Children, pregnant women, people with liver or bowel disease, and anyone taking it for longer than a season have never been studied.

Each correction here is less exciting than the claim it replaces. That is usually how you can tell it is closer to the truth.

When to see a doctor

Akkermansia belongs to the category of things that are probably harmless for most healthy adults and genuinely unstudied for everyone else, which is exactly the category where a clinician’s judgment earns its keep.

Book a routine conversation with your doctor or pharmacist before starting if you take any prescription medicine, particularly glucose-lowering drugs, immunosuppressants or anticoagulants; if you have diabetes, liver disease, inflammatory bowel disease or a history of pancreatitis; if you are pregnant, breastfeeding or under 18; or if you are considering akkermansia instead of a treatment your clinician has recommended. That last scenario is the one that worries clinicians most, because the cost of delaying proven care for an unproven supplement is paid in health, not money.

Seek prompt medical attention, and stop the supplement in the meantime, if you develop any of the following after starting:

• Yellowing of the skin or eyes, dark urine, pale stools or pain under the right ribs, which can signal liver injury from any supplement.
• Fever, chills or feeling generally unwell, especially if your immune system is weakened, because these can indicate a bloodstream infection.
• Severe or persistent abdominal pain, blood in the stool, or vomiting that does not settle.
• Hives, swelling of the face or lips, or difficulty breathing, which are signs of an allergic reaction and need emergency care.
• Unusually low blood glucose readings or symptoms such as shakiness, sweating and confusion if you take diabetes medicines.

And if your reason for interest is unexplained weight change, persistent fatigue, memory concerns or new digestive symptoms, those are reasons to be assessed rather than supplemented. A clinician can check for common, treatable causes and, if appropriate, discuss whether any microbiome-directed approach makes sense for you. Every decision about starting, continuing or stopping a product like this sits with the person who knows your medical history, and that person is not a label.

Frequently asked questions

Where does Akkermansia come from?

Akkermansia muciniphila is a native resident of the human gut, acquired in infancy from the mother and the environment, and it was first isolated from a human stool sample in 2004. It lives in the intestinal mucus layer and feeds on mucin, the protein that forms that layer. It is not present in yogurt, fermented vegetables or any other food, so dietary intake does not introduce it.

Who should not take Akkermansia probiotics?

People with weakened immune systems, critical illness, central venous lines, active inflammatory bowel disease or recent abdominal surgery should not take akkermansia without their clinician’s agreement, because bacterial supplements have not been studied in these groups. Pregnant and breastfeeding women and anyone under 18 were excluded from human trials and from the European safety authorization. People taking glucose-lowering medicines should involve their prescriber first.

Is Akkermansia hard on the liver?

Current evidence does not suggest akkermansia harms the liver, but the evidence is small. In the only randomized human trial, liver enzyme markers such as GGT and AST fell slightly in the pasteurized akkermansia group over three months, and animal studies show reduced liver fat. Safety in people with existing liver disease has not been tested, so anyone with abnormal liver tests should ask the clinician managing that condition before starting.

Which probiotics contain Akkermansia muciniphila?

Akkermansia is sold in three formats: single-ingredient pasteurized products, which match the form used in the 2019 human trial; live-cell products that require special encapsulation because the bacterium dies in oxygen; and multi-strain blends that combine it with species such as Clostridium butyricum or Bifidobacterium infantis. Check the label for the specific form and strain, and remember that no akkermansia product is approved to treat any condition.

Is pasteurized Akkermansia a probiotic or a postbiotic?

Pasteurized akkermansia is technically a postbiotic, meaning a preparation of inactivated microorganisms or their components that confers a health benefit, because heat treatment kills the cells. A probiotic by definition must be alive. The pasteurized form performed better than the live form in the only human trial, apparently because a surface protein called Amuc_1100 signals the gut lining whether or not the bacterium survives.

Does Akkermansia help you lose weight?

Not on current human evidence. In the 2019 trial, adults taking pasteurized akkermansia lost about two kilograms more than placebo over three months, but the difference was not statistically significant and the study was designed to test safety, not weight. Insulin sensitivity and cholesterol improved more convincingly. Larger, longer trials with weight as a primary outcome would be needed before any weight-loss claim is justified.

Does Akkermansia increase GLP-1?

In rodents and laboratory gut-cell cultures, akkermansia components increased release of GLP-1, a gut hormone that improves insulin secretion and promotes fullness. No human study has measured GLP-1 levels, appetite or food intake in people taking akkermansia, so the claim that it works like a GLP-1 medicine is an extrapolation from animal data. Prescribed GLP-1 medicines act at drug-level intensity that a bacterial signal does not approach.

How can I increase Akkermansia naturally?

Diets rich in polyphenols, found in cranberries, grapes, pomegranates, green tea and cocoa, and in fermentable fibers such as inulin from chicory, onions and garlic, are associated with higher akkermansia in animal and small human studies. Mediterranean-style eating, time-restricted eating and omega-3 intake show similar associations. A diet high in saturated fat and low in plants reliably lowers it. Fermented foods do not contain the bacterium.

What are the side effects of Akkermansia supplements?

Reported side effects are mild and digestive: bloating, gas, changes in stool pattern and occasional nausea, usually easing within a few weeks. In the three-month human trial, adverse events were no more common than with placebo and no serious events were linked to the supplement. Long-term side effects, effects in people with chronic illness and the safety of live products with variable manufacturing have not been systematically studied.

Can Akkermansia protect against cognitive decline?

Only animal and observational data exist. In mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease and diet-induced memory impairment, akkermansia supplementation improved maze performance and reduced amyloid deposits. In humans, lower levels have been observed in some people with cognitive impairment, yet higher levels appear in multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease, so the relationship is unclear. No randomized trial has tested it for memory or dementia risk in people.

This article is for general information only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult a qualified doctor about your individual situation.