Th17 cells in primary Sjögren’s syndrome negatively correlate with increased Roseburia and Coprococcus

Abstract

BackgroundDysbiosis of the gut microbiota is closely related to chronic systemic inflammation and autoimmunity, playing an essential role in the pathogenesis of primary Sjögren’s syndrome (pSS). Abnormalities in the proportions of blood T lymphocyte subtype, that is Th17/Treg, were detected in pSS patients. We aimed to determine the associations between gut microbiota and Th17/Treg in pSS.Method98 pSS patients and 105 healthy controls (NC) were enrolled between Dec 1, 2018, and Aug 31, 2019. The baseline information and clinical parameters on pSS patients and healthy controls were collected. 16S rRNA sequencing was performed to characterize the gut microbiome and identify gut microbes that are differentially abundant between patients and healthy controls. Lastly, associations between relative abundances of specific bacterial taxa in the gut and clinical outcome parameters were evaluated.ResultsPatients with pSS show decreased gut microbial diversity and richness, decreased abundance of butyrate producing bacteria, such as Roseburia and Coprococcus, and increased abundance of other taxa, such as Eubacterium rectale and Roseburia inulinivorans. These bacteria are enriched with functions related to glycolytic and lipogenic, energy, substance, galactose, pentose metabolism pathways and glucuronate interconversions, decreased with functions related to peptidoglycan biosynthesis, pyrimidine metabolism pathways. An integrative analysis identified pSS-related specific bacterial taxa in the gut, for which the abundance of Eubacterium rectale is negatively correlated with Th17/Treg. Furthermore, the pathways of biosynthesis of secondary metabolites, biosynthesis of amino acids, peptidoglycan biosynthesis and pyrimidine, galactose, pentose, microbial metabolism in diverse environments, glyoxylate and dicarboxylate metabolism are associated with Treg or Th17/Treg.ConclusionsPrimary Sjögren’s syndrome could lead to decreased gut microbial diversity and richness of intestinal flora in patients. The proportions of Th17 and Treg cells induced by microbiota were predictive pSS manifestations and accounted for the pSS severity.

Landscape of intestinal microbiota in patients with IgA nephropathy, IgA vasculitis and Kawasaki disease

“…It is generally accepted that the human gut flora consists of about 30 genera and 500 species of bacteria, the microbiota, and that these intestinal players work together to maintain homeostasis in the human gastrointestinal tract (Ling et al, 2022), ensuring the integrity of the epithelial barrier function of the gut and the normal function of various immune cells. Our group has found that dysbiosis of the intestinal flora is associated with many autoimmune diseases, such as primary Sjögren's syndrome (Xin et al, 2022), systemic lupus erythematosus (Yaigoub et al, 2022) and Takayasu arteritis (TA) (Fan et al, 2022). But in this study, our analysis found significantly lower intestinal bacterial abundance and species richness in children with IgAV, KD and IgAN groups than in healthy children, but also a relatively increased number of genera in the different diseases.…”

Gut microbiota landscape and potential biomarker identification in female patients with systemic lupus erythematosus using machine learning

“…The experiment procedures consist of DNA extraction and Illumina sequencing, Operational taxonomic unit (OTU) cluster analysis and species annotation and Bioinformatics analysis, as previously described ( Xin et al., 2022 ).…”

Comparing Gut Microbiota Discrepancies between Primary Sjogren's Syndrome and Healthy Controls: A Systematic Review

“…In terms of the diversity of gut microbiota, we observed that six studies indicate signi cantly lower αdiversity of gut microbiota in patients with primary Sjogren's syndrome compared to the healthy control group [13,28,29,[31][32][33]. Two studies suggested a signi cant difference in α-diversity between the two groups [30,35], while one study indicated a signi cant increase in α-diversity [20].…”

“…The total sample size across all ten studies was 1817 participants, comprising 504 case groups and 1313 control groups. Nine studies included compared discrepancies in gut microbiota between primary Sjogren's syndrome patients and health controls [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]. Seven of the nine studies included were from China [20, 22-25, 27, 28], while the others were from the Netherlands and Spain[21, 26].…”

“…Seven of the nine studies included were from China [20, 22-25, 27, 28], while the others were from the Netherlands and Spain[21, 26]. Of these, there studies were published before 2021[21, 23,26], while the remaining six were published after 2021 [20,22,24,25,27,28]. Two studies [29,30] included only women.…”