Microbiome biomarkers associated with the gut contraction response elicited by the Japanese traditional medicine daikenchuto.

Objective biomarkers are crucial in the development of personalized medicines, such as Japanese traditional medicine (Kampo). To date, some objective markers to predict the response of Kampo medicines have been reported, but the information is somewhat limited. The aim of this study was to search for objective markers and combinations thereof to estimate the effect of the Japanese traditional medicine daikenchuto (DKT) on colon contraction intensity in guinea pigs. Specifically, the microbiome biomarkers were employed as candidate, using the Fisher ratio and the nearest neighbor classifier for statistical pattern recognition. The combination of the ratio between gut microbes of family Ruminococcaceae/Rikenellaceae, Ruminococcaceae/Paraprevotellaceae, and genus Ruminococcus/unknown genus in family Rikenellaceae of guinea pig gut microbes was found to influence the activity of DKT with 0.8 accuracy for test samples. These findings suggest that statistical pattern recognition can contribute to identifying target markers of multi-target drugs such as Kampo.