Gastrointestinal Laboratory, Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA.
UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Veterinary Medicine and Epidemiology, University of California-Davis, Davis, CA, USA.
J Feline Med Surg. 2022 Jun;24(6):e1-e12. doi: 10.1177/1098612X221077876. Epub 2022 Mar 10.
Previous studies have identified various bacterial taxa that are altered in cats with chronic enteropathies (CE) vs healthy cats. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop a targeted quantitative molecular method to evaluate the fecal microbiota of cats.
Fecal samples from 80 client-owned healthy cats and 68 cats with CE were retrospectively evaluated. A panel of quantitative PCR (qPCR) assays was used to measure the fecal abundance of total bacteria and seven bacterial taxa: , , , , , and The nearest centroid classifier algorithm was used to calculate a dysbiosis index (DI) based on these qPCR abundances.
The abundances of total bacteria, , , , were significantly decreased, while those of and were significantly increased in cats with CE ( <0.027 for all). The DI in cats with CE was significantly higher compared with healthy cats ( <0.001). When the cut-off value of the DI was set at 0, it provided 77% (95% confidence interval [CI] 66-85) sensitivity and 96% (95% CI 89-99) specificity to differentiate the microbiota of cats with CE from those of healthy cats. Fifty-two of 68 cats with CE had a DI >0.
A qPCR-based DI for assessing the fecal microbiota of cats was established. The results showed that a large proportion of cats with CE had an altered fecal microbiota as evidenced by an increased DI. Prospective studies are warranted to evaluate the utility of this assay for clinical assessment of feline CE.
先前的研究已经确定了在患有慢性肠炎（CE）的猫和健康猫中发生改变的各种细菌分类群。因此，本研究的目的是开发一种靶向定量分子方法来评估猫的粪便微生物群。
回顾性评估了 80 只患畜拥有的健康猫和 68 只患有 CE 的猫的粪便样本。使用一组定量 PCR（qPCR）检测来测量总细菌和七种细菌分类群的粪便丰度： 、 、 、 、 、 。使用最近质心分类器算法根据这些 qPCR 丰度计算失调指数（DI）。
CE 猫的总细菌、 、 、 丰度显著降低，而 、 和 的丰度显著增加（所有<0.027）。CE 猫的 DI 明显高于健康猫（<0.001）。当 DI 的截止值设定为 0 时，它可以区分 CE 猫和健康猫的粪便微生物群，其灵敏度为 77%（95%置信区间[CI] 66-85），特异性为 96%（95%CI 89-99）。68 只 CE 猫中有 52 只的 DI>0。
建立了一种基于 qPCR 的 DI 来评估猫的粪便微生物群。结果表明，很大一部分患有 CE 的猫的粪便微生物群发生了改变，表现为 DI 增加。需要进行前瞻性研究来评估该检测方法在评估猫 CE 临床中的效用。
