Analysis of intestinal microbiota diversity in children with non-organic anorexia

The pathogenesis of non-organic anorexia in children is not clear. This study intends to analyze intestinal bacteria to provide a relevant theoretical basis for the clinical rational selection of microecological agents. In the present study, children with non-organic anorexia were included in the anorexia group and normal healthy children in the control group. Stool samples were collected for the bioinformatics analysis after PCR and high-throughput sequencing. The results showed that the Ace, Chao, and Shannon indexes in the anorexia group were higher than those in the control group, while the Simpson index in the control group was lower than in the anorexia group. There were 14 taxa in the anorexia group and 11 taxa in the healthy control group at the phylum level, and 193 taxa in the anorexia group and 180 in the control group at the genus level. The dominant bacteria at the phylum level of the two groups were the same, while there were 16 dominant bacteria taxa in the anorexia group and 17 in the control group at the genus level. The ratio of percentage abundance of Bacteroidetes to that of Firmicutes (the B/F index) in the anorexia group was higher than in the control group. The abundance of Bacteroidetes in the anorexia group was higher than that in the control group, and the abundance of Actinomycetes in the control group was higher than that in the anorexia group. There were significant differences in 14 dominant genera between the two groups at the genus classification level. The LEfSe multilevel species difference analysis showed that at the phylum level, the significant influential bacterial taxa in the anorexia group were Bacteroidetes and Actinobacteria in the control group. At the genus level, the significant influential bacterial taxa in the anorexia group were Bacteroides, Faecalibacterium, and Subdoligranulum, and Bifidobacterium, Blautia, Streptococcus, Lachnoclostridium, and Erysipelatoclostridium in the control group. We conclude that the increase in Bacteroides abundance or in the B/F index and the reduction in Bifidobacterium abundance were related to the pathogenesis of anorexia.