Gut microbiome biomarkers in adolescent obesity: a regional study

Xue-Feng Gao; Bin-Bin Wu; Yong-Long Pan; Shao-Ming Zhou; Ming Zhang; Yue-Hua You; Yun-Peng Cai; Yan Liang

doi:10.1007/s13755-023-00236-9

Gut microbiome biomarkers in adolescent obesity: a regional study

Health Inf Sci Syst. 2023 Aug 17;11(1):37. doi: 10.1007/s13755-023-00236-9. eCollection 2023 Dec.

Authors

Xue-Feng Gao^#^{1

2}, Bin-Bin Wu^#³, Yong-Long Pan³, Shao-Ming Zhou⁴, Ming Zhang⁵, Yue-Hua You^{6

7

8}, Yun-Peng Cai⁹, Yan Liang^{10

11}

Affiliations

¹ Integrative Microecology Clinical Center, Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Gastrointestinal Microbiota and Disease, Shenzhen Clinical Research Center for Digestive Disease, Shenzhen Technology Research Center of Gut Microbiota Transplantation, Shenzhen Hospital, Southern Medical University, Shenzhen, China.
² Central Laboratory, Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Precision Medicine for Hematological Malignancies, Shenzhen University General Hospital, Shenzhen, China.
³ Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China.
⁴ Department of Gastroenterology, Shenzhen Children's Hospital, Shenzhen, China.
⁵ Department of Nutrition, Peking University Shenzhen Hospital, Shenzhen, China.
⁶ Department of Stomatology, Longhua People's Hospital Affiliated to Southern Medical University, Shenzhen, 518109 Guangdong China.
⁷ School of Stomatology, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, 510515 Guangdong China.
⁸ Key Laboratory of Oral Microbiology and Medical Transformation of Shenzhen Longhua District, Shenzhen, China.
⁹ Research Center for Biomedical Information Technology, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China.
¹⁰ School of Resources and Environment, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
¹¹ ShenSi Lab, Shenzhen Institute for Advanced Study, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Shenzhen, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Purpose: This study aimed to characterize the gut microbiota in obese adolescents from Shenzhen (China), and evaluate influence of gender on BMI-related differences in the gut microbiome.

Methods: Evaluation of physical examination, blood pressure measurement, serological assay and body composition were conducted in 205 adolescent subjects at Shenzhen. Fecal microbiome composition was profiled via high-throughput sequencing of the V3-V4 regions of the 16S rRNA gene. A Random Forest (RF) classifier model was built to distinguish the BMI categories based on the gut bacterial composition.

Results: Fifty-six taxa consisting mainly of Firmicutes were identified that having significant associations with BMI; 2 OTUs belonging to Ruminococcaceae and 1 belonging to Lachnospiraceae had relatively strong positive correlations with body fate rate, waistline and most of serum biochemical properties. Based on the 56 BMI-associated OTUs, the RF model showed a robust classification accuracy (AUC 0.96) for predicting the obese phenotype. Gender-specific differences in the gut microbiome composition was obtained, and a lower relative abundance of Odoribacter genus was particularly found in obese boys. Functional analysis revealed a deficiency in bacterial gene contents related to peroxisome and PPAR signaling pathway in the obese subjects for both genders.

Conclusions: This study reveals unique features of gut microbiome in terms of microbial composition and metabolic functions in obese adolescents, and provides a baseline for reference and comparison studies.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13755-023-00236-9.

Keywords: 16S rRNA; Adolescent obesity; Gut microbiota; Peroxisome signaling.

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