Gender Influences Gut Microbiota among Patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Abstract

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a chronic functional gastrointestinal disease that affects approximately 11% of the general population. The gut microbiota, among other known factors, plays a substantial role in its pathogenesis. The study aimed to characterize the gut microbiota differences between patients with IBS and unaffected individuals, taking into account the gender aspect of the patients and the types of IBS determined on the basis of the Rome IV Criteria, the IBS-C, IBS-D, IBS-M, and IBS-U. In total, 121 patients with IBS and 70 unaffected individuals participated in the study; the derived stool samples were subjected to 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. The gut microbiota of patients with IBS was found to be more diverse in comparison to unaffected individuals, and the differences were observed primarily among Clostridiales, Mogibacteriaceae, Synergistaceae, Coriobacteriaceae, Blautia spp., and Shuttleworthia spp., depending on the study subgroup and patient gender. There was higher differentiation of females’ gut microbiota compared to males, regardless of the disease status. No correlation between the composition of the gut microbiota and the type of IBS was found. Patients with IBS were characterized by more diverse gut microbiota compared to unaffected individuals. The gender criterion should be considered in the characterization of the gut microbiota. The type of IBS did not determine the identified differences in gut microbiota.

A double‐blind, randomized, placebo‐controlled study assessing the impact of probiotic supplementation on the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome in females

“…It has been found that the diversity of the IBS gut microbiota differs from that of healthy subjects 5,6,[54][55][56] particularly in females. 57 Comparison of the baseline alpha diversity of the IBS cohort from this study with that of age, gender and/or geographically matched non-IBS populations from previous studies with the Lab4 probiotic 18,30 showed the alpha diversity of the IBS population was significantly lower (Figure S8). There was a trend towards higher diversity in the active group at the end of the study, but not the placebo.…”

The Effects of Fermented Rice Drink With Lactiplantibacillus plantarum JSA22 in Overweight Irritable Bowel Syndrome Patients: A Randomized, Double-blind, Placebo-controlled Study

“…Among these, Blautia and Prevotella were found to be the most abundant genera in IBS patients in other studies. 27 , 28 In the fermented rice drink group, Blautia significantly increased by 1.5 times after consumption of the drink compared to baseline, while there was no difference in the nonfermented rice drink group. Blautia is a genus of anaerobic bacteria with probiotic characteristics found widely in the mammalian stool.…”

The gut microbiota participates in the effect of linaclotide in patients with irritable bowel syndrome with constipation (IBS-C): a multicenter, prospective, pre-post study

“…First, this study was not a randomized, controlled, double-blind clinical study, and the sample size was not sufficiently large. Second, gender based differences on IBS were clearly reported, and most IBS-C patients were female [ 45 , 46 ]. Although the gender distribution of our patients showed the phenomenon above and we conduct a self-controlled pre-post study to exclude gender interference factor, we could not get valid results on gender differences in linaclotide treatment.…”