Research Article Open Access

Dysbiosis of Gut Microbiota in Patients with Large-Artery Atherosclerotic Stroke: A Pilot Study

Abstract

Introduction: Increasing data demonstrate an association between gut microbiome in brain diseases via the gut-brain axis. However, few studies have evaluated the association between gut microbiome and Large-Artery Atherosclerotic (LAA) ischemic stroke patients.

Methods: A cross-sectional pilot study was conducted among 15 patients with LAA stroke and 15 asymptomatic persons. LAA were diagnosed using TOAST classification. The control group was selected based on age-match and sex-match with the patient group. Participants provided a stool sample profiled by 16S rRNA sequencing. Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare the differences in gut microbiota profile between groups. Alpha-diversity and beta-diversity evaluated gut microbial diversity. Gut microbial genus and stroke were correlated using generalized linear mixed effects models which were adjusted for age, BMI, underlying disease (diabetes, hypertension and dyslipidemia), and alcohol use.

Results: The average age of stroke patients was 61.1 ± 7.1 and 59.2 ± 8.2 in the control group. Beta-diversity (Bray-Curtis dissimilarity) of the gut microbiome was statistically significant in order, family and genus level (P-value=0.017, 0.011 and 0.003, respectively) between stroke and control groups; however, there was no statistically significant difference in alpha-diversity (Shannon diversity index; P-value=0.852). Using generalized linear mix effect model, we found 6 genera were significantly associated with stroke after multivariate adjustment. Ruminococcus spp. (P-value=0.017), Streptococcus spp. (P-value=0.019), Actinomyces spp. (P-value=0.02) and Dorea spp. (P-value=0.021) showed positive association while Bifidobacterium spp. (P-value=0.04) and Faecalibacterium spp. (P-value=0.041) showed negative association with stroke.

Conclusion: Patients with LAA stroke had a decreased microbiome beta-diversity and certain gut microbiota genera may be related to LAA stroke.

Chatpol Samuthpongtorn1, Abhinbhen W. Saraya2,3, Yutthana Joyjinda3,4, Apaporn Rodpan3,5, Nijasri C. Suwanwela6*

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