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Clinical Trial
. 2017 Jun 19;7(1):3762.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-03476-4.

Gut microbiota of liver transplantation recipients

Affiliations
Clinical Trial

Gut microbiota of liver transplantation recipients

Li-Ying Sun et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

The characteristics of intestinal microbial communities may be affected by changes in the pathophysiology of patients with end-stage liver disease. Here, we focused on the characteristics of intestinal fecal microbial communities in post-liver transplantation (LT) patients in comparison with those in the same individuals pre-LT and in healthy individuals. The fecal microbial communities were analyzed via MiSeq-PE250 sequencing of the V4 region of 16S ribosomal RNA and were then compared between groups. We found that the gut microbiota of patients with severe liver disease who were awaiting LT was significantly different from that of healthy controls, as represented by the first principal component (p = 0.0066). Additionally, the second principal component represented a significant difference in the gut microbiota of patients between pre-LT and post-LT surgery (p = 0.03125). After LT, there was a significant decrease in the abundance of certain microbial species, such as Actinobacillus, Escherichia, and Shigella, and a significant increase in the abundance of other microbial species, such as Micromonosporaceae, Desulfobacterales, the Sarcina genus of Eubacteriaceae, and Akkermansia. Based on KEGG profiles, 15 functional modules were enriched and 21 functional modules were less represented in the post-LT samples compared with the pre-LT samples. Our study demonstrates that fecal microbial communities were significantly altered by LT.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The results of a PCoA based on OTU composition are shown as graphs of the (a) LT-filtered weighted unifrac distance and (b) the unifrac distance from the pre-LT and post-LT samples to the control samples.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The enterotypes of samples from the pre-LT, post-LT, and healthy control groups were analyzed. (a) The number of enterotype clusters. (b) The enterotypes of all samples. (c) The distribution of enterotypes. (d) The genus distribution of all enterotypes.
Figure 3
Figure 3
LEfSe analysis of differential species abundance between the pre-LT and post-LT groups was performed. The LDA score is used as the abscissa, and higher scores indicate a greater difference. The red and green horizontal bars represent the species enrichment in the post-LT and pre-LT groups, respectively.
Figure 4
Figure 4
A cladogram plot of differential species abundance between the pre-LT and post-LT groups is shown. The red and green areas represent the species enrichment in the post-LT and pre-LT groups, respectively.
Figure 5
Figure 5
The distributions of Coriobacteriaceae and Akkermansia in all samples from the pre-LT, post-LT, and healthy control groups are shown.
Figure 6
Figure 6
The abundance of Akkermansia in samples from patients collected before and after LT surgery is shown.

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