Adolescent gut microbiome imbalance and its association with immune response in inflammatory bowel diseases and obesity

Recently, there has been an increase in the number of studies focusing on the association between the gut microbiome and obesity or inflammatory diseases, especially in adults. However, there is a lack of studies investigating the association between gut microbiome and gastrointestinal (GI) diseases in adolescents.

We obtained 16S rRNA-seq datasets for gut microbiome analysis from 202 adolescents, comprising ulcerative colitis (UC), Crohn's disease (CD), obesity (Ob), and healthy controls (HC). We utilized Quantitative Insights Into Microbial Ecology (QIIME) and Phylogenetic Investigation of Communities by Reconstruction of Unobserved States (PICRUSt) to acquire Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs). Subsequently, we analyzed Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) Orthology (KO) terms and pathway enrichment for the identified OTUs.

In this study, we investigated the difference between the gut microbiomes in adolescents with GI diseases and those in healthy adolescents using 202 samples of 16S rRNA sequencing data. The distribution of the six main gut microbiota (i.e., unclassified Dorea, unclassified Lachnospiraceae, unclassified Ruminococcus, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, Prevotella copri, unclassified Sutterella) was different based on the status of obesity and inflammatory diseases. Dysbiosis was observed within Lachnospiraceae in adolescents with inflammatory diseases (i.e., UC and CD), and in adolescents with obesity within Prevotella and Sutterella. More specifically, our results showed that the relative abundance of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii and unclassified Lachnospiraceae was more than 10% and 8% higher, respectively, in the UC group compared to the CD, Ob, and HC groups. Additionally, the Ob group had over 20% and over 3% higher levels of Prevotella copri and unclassified Sutterella, respectively, compared to the UC, CD, and HC groups. Also, inspecting associations between the six specific microbiota and KO terms, we found that the six microbiota -relating KO terms were associated with NOD-like receptor signaling. These six taxa differences may affect the immune system and inflammatory response by affecting NOD-like receptor signaling in the host during critical adolescence.

In this study, we discovered that dysbiosis of the microbial community had varying degrees of influence on the inflammatory and immune response pathways in adolescents with inflammatory diseases and obesity.