Intestinal cholesterol conversion in adults and elderly from four different European countries.

The growing healthy aging population in Europe is a heterogeneous group with varying nutritional needs, especially in association with problems like decreased sense of smell and taste, saliva production, chewing and swallowing problems besides all disease problems that put specific demands on the dietary intake and the role of the intestinal metabolism. To investigate this, one must clarify which functions are related to the host itself and which actions are related to the microflora. In short, the host's side of the ecosystem can be defined as milieu interieur (MI), the non-host side as milieu exterieur (ME) and MI plus ME together as milieu total (MT). We have investigated the role of the intestinal flora and its functions in adults and elderly from different European countries and this publication is concentrated on the microbial conversion of intestinal cholesterol to coprostanol, aiming to investigate the hepatic-intestinal flora co-cross-talk.