Department of Neurology, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany.
Institute of Clinical Microbiology and Hygiene, University Medical Center, Regensburg, Germany.
Neurobiol Aging. 2018 Jan;61:132-137. doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2017.09.023. Epub 2017 Oct 3.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative motor neuron disease accompanied by both systemic and central nervous system-specific inflammation as well as deregulated energy metabolism. These potential pathogenetic factors have recently been found to mutually interact with the gut microbiota, raising the hypothesis of a link between microbiome alterations and ALS pathogenesis. The aim of our study was to assess whether ALS is associated with an altered composition of the fecal microbiota. We compared the fecal microbiota of 25 ALS patients with 32 age- and gender-matched healthy persons using 16S rRNA gene sequencing analysis. Confounding factors and secondary disease effects on the microbiome were minimized by selection of patients without dysphagia, gastrostomy, noninvasive ventilation, or reduced body mass index. Comparing the 2 carefully matched groups, the diversity and the abundance of the bacterial taxa on the different taxonomic levels as well as PICRUSt-predicted metagenomes were almost indistinguishable. Significant differences between ALS patients and healthy controls were only observed with regard to the overall number of microbial species (operational taxonomic units) and in the abundance of uncultured Ruminococcaceae. Conclusively, ALS patients do not exhibit a substantial alteration of the gut microbiota composition.
肌萎缩侧索硬化症（ALS）是一种致命的神经退行性运动神经元疾病，伴有全身和中枢神经系统特异性炎症以及代谢紊乱。最近发现这些潜在的致病因素与肠道微生物群相互作用，提出了微生物群改变与 ALS 发病机制之间存在联系的假说。我们的研究旨在评估 ALS 是否与粪便微生物群的组成改变有关。我们使用 16S rRNA 基因测序分析比较了 25 名 ALS 患者和 32 名年龄和性别匹配的健康人的粪便微生物群。通过选择没有吞咽困难、胃造口术、无创通气或体重指数降低的患者，最大限度地减少了混杂因素和对微生物群的继发疾病影响。比较这 2 个精心匹配的组，在不同分类水平上的细菌分类群的多样性和丰度以及 PICRUSt 预测的宏基因组几乎没有区别。仅在微生物种的总数（操作分类单位）和未培养的真细菌科的丰度方面观察到 ALS 患者与健康对照组之间存在显著差异。总之，ALS 患者的肠道微生物群组成没有明显改变。
