Academy of Pediatrics, Hengyang Medical School, University of South China, Hengyang, China.
Department of Hematology and Oncology, Hunan Children's Hospital, Changsha, China.
Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2022 Nov 3;12:965471. doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2022.965471. eCollection 2022.
To better understand the alterations in gut microbiota and metabolic pathways in children with focal epilepsy, and to further investigate the changes in the related gut microbiota and metabolic pathways in these children before and after treatment.
Ten patients with newly diagnosed focal epilepsy in Hunan Children's Hospital from April, 2020 to October, 2020 were recruited into the case group. The case group was further divided into a pre-treatment subgroup and a post-treatment subgroup. Additionally, 14 healthy children of the same age were recruited into a control group. The microbial communities were analyzed using 16s rDNA sequencing data. Metastas and LEfSe were used to identify different bacteria between and within groups. The Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes database was used to KEGG enrichment analysis.
There were significant differences in α diversity among the pre-treatment, post-treatment, and control groups. Besides, the differences in gut microbiota composition in 3 groups were identified by principal co-ordinates analysis (PCoA), which showed a similar composition of the pre-treatment and post-treatment subgroups. At the phyla level, the relative abundance of in the pre-treatment subgroup was significantly higher than that in the control group, which decreased significantly after 3 months of treatment and showed no significant difference between the control group. In terms of the genus level, , , , and were enriched in the pre-treatment subgroup, while and were enriched in the control group. The relative abundance of , , , and was reduced significantly after a three-month treatment. Despite some genera remaining significantly different between the post-treatment subgroup and control group, the number of significantly different genera decreased from 9 to 4 through treatment. Notably, we found that the carbohydrate metabolism, especially succinate, was related to focal epilepsy.
Children with focal epilepsy compared with healthy controls were associated with the statistically significant differences in the gut microbiota and carbohydrate metabolism. The differences were reduced and the carbohydrate metabolism improved after effective treatment. Our research may provide new directions for understanding the role of gut microbiota in the pathogenesis of focal epilepsy and better alternative treatments.
更好地了解局灶性癫痫儿童肠道微生物群和代谢途径的改变,并进一步研究这些儿童治疗前后相关肠道微生物群和代谢途径的变化。
2020 年 4 月至 2020 年 10 月,湖南儿童医院招募了 10 例新诊断为局灶性癫痫的患者作为病例组。病例组进一步分为治疗前亚组和治疗后亚组。此外,招募了 14 名年龄相同的健康儿童作为对照组。使用 16s rDNA 测序数据分析微生物群落。Metastas 和 LEfSe 用于识别组间和组内的不同细菌。京都基因与基因组百科全书数据库用于 KEGG 富集分析。
治疗前、治疗后和对照组之间的α多样性存在显著差异。此外,通过主坐标分析(PCoA)确定了 3 组肠道微生物群落组成的差异,治疗前和治疗后亚组显示出相似的组成。在门水平上,治疗前亚组的相对丰度显著高于对照组,治疗 3 个月后显著降低,与对照组无显著差异。在属水平上,治疗前亚组中 、 、 、 和 丰富,而对照组中 、 和 丰富。治疗 3 个月后, 、 、 、 和 相对丰度显著降低。尽管治疗后亚组与对照组之间仍有一些属存在显著差异,但通过治疗,显著差异的属数量从 9 个减少到 4 个。值得注意的是,我们发现碳水化合物代谢,特别是琥珀酸,与局灶性癫痫有关。
与健康对照组相比,局灶性癫痫患儿的肠道微生物群和碳水化合物代谢存在统计学显著差异。经过有效治疗,差异减少,碳水化合物代谢改善。我们的研究可能为理解肠道微生物群在局灶性癫痫发病机制中的作用以及更好的替代治疗提供新的方向。