Primary progressive multiple sclerosis in a Russian cohort: relationship with gut bacterial diversity

Gut microbiota has been increasingly acknowledged to shape significantly human health, contributing to various autoimmune diseases, both intestinal and non-intestinal, including multiple sclerosis (MS). Gut microbiota studies in patients with relapsing remitting MS strongly suggested its possible role in immunoregulation; however, the profile and potential of gut microbiota involvement in patients with primary progressive MS (PPMS) patients has received much less attention due to the rarity of this disease form. We compared the composition and structure of faecal bacterial assemblage using Illumina MiSeq sequencing of V3-V4 hypervariable region of 16S rRNA genes amplicons in patients with primary progressive MS and in the healthy controls.

Over all samples 12 bacterial phyla were identified, containing 21 classes, 25 orders, 54 families, 174 genera and 1256 operational taxonomic units (OTUs). The Firmicutes phylum was found to be ultimately dominating both in OTUs richness (68% of the total bacterial OTU number) and in abundance (71% of the total number of sequence reads), followed by Bacteroidetes (12 and 16%, resp.) and Actinobacteria (7 and 6%, resp.). Summarily in all samples the number of dominant OTUs, i.e. OTUs with ≥1% relative abundance, was 13, representing much less taxonomic richness (three phyla, three classes, four orders, six families and twelve genera) as compared to the total list of identified OTUs and accounting for 30% of the sequence reads number in the healthy cohort and for 23% in the PPMS cohort. Human faecal bacterial diversity profiles were found to differ between PPMS and healthy cohorts at different taxonomic levels in minor or rare taxa. Marked PPMS-associated increase was found in the relative abundance of two dominant OTUs (Gemmiger sp. and an unclassified Ruminococcaceae). The MS-related differences were also found at the level of minor and rare OTUs (101 OTUs). These changes in OTUs' abundance translated into increased bacterial assemblage diversity in patients.

The findings are important for constructing a more detailed global picture of the primary progressive MS-associated gut microbiota, contributing to better understanding of the disease pathogenesis.