Alteration in gut microbiota associated with hepatitis B and non-hepatitis virus related hepatocellular carcinoma

The onset of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) ranked fifth malignancies all over the world. Increasing evidences showed that the distribution of HCC was related to the incidence of chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection and other factors, such as alcoholism, aflatoxin B1 ingestion and obesity. Recent studies demonstrated that gut dysbiosis plays an important role in liver diseases. However, the researches on gut microbiota of HBV and non-HBV non-HCV related HCC have not been reported. In this study, we investigated the differences between the gut microbiota of HBV related HCC (B-HCC) and non-HBV non-HCV related HCC (NBNC-HCC), finally found some potential bacteria, linking different pathological mechanism of both types of HCCs.

We carried out 16S rRNA analyses in a cohort of 33 healthy controls, 35 individuals with HBV related HCC (B-HCC) and 22 individuals with non-HBV non-HCV (NBNC) related HCC (NBNC-HCC). We found that the species richness of fecal microbiota of B-HCC patients was much higher than other two groups. Interestingly, the feces of NBNC-HCC patients harbored more potential pro-inflammatory bacteria (Escherichia-Shigella, Enterococcus) and reduced levels of Faecalibacterium, Ruminococcus, Ruminoclostridium which results in decrease potential of anti-inflammatory short-chain fatty acids. The feces of NBNC-HCC patients had relatively fewer abundance of multiple biological pathways related to amino acid and glucose metabolism, but high level of transport and secretion in some types. However, the B-HCC patients had opposite results of bacterial composition and associated multiple biological pathways versus NBNC-HCC patients. Meanwhile, we found that aberrant network of gut microbiota occurred differently in B-HCC and NBNC-HCC patients.

Our study indicated that B-HCC and NBNC-HCC patients showed differential abundance of bacteria involved in different functions or biological pathways. We suggested the modification of specific gut microbiota may provide the therapeutic benefit for B-HCC and NBNC-HCC.