Profile of gut microbiota in patients with traumatic thoracic spinal cord injury and its clinical implications: a case-control study in a rehabilitation setting

ABSTRACT

Gut microbiota are the candidate biomarkers for neurogenic bowel dysfunction (NBD) in patients with spinal cord injury (SCI). We aimed to identify the common features between patients with varying degree of thoracic SCI and healthy individuals and subpopulations of microbiota correlated with the serum biomarkers. Twenty-one patients with complete thoracic SCI (CTSCI), 24 with incomplete thoracic SCI (ITSCI), and 24 healthy individuals (HC) were enrolled in this study. Fresh stool samples and clinical data were collected from all participants, and their bowel functions with SCI were assessed. Microbial diversity and composition were analyzed by sequencing the 16S rRNA gene. The features of gut microbiota correlated with the serum biomarkers and their functions were investigated. The mean NBD score of patients with CTSCI was higher than that of patients with ITSCI. Diversity of the gut microbiota in SCI group was reduced, and with an increase in the degree of damage, alpha diversity had decreased gradually. The composition of gut microbiota in patients with SCI was distinct from that in healthy individuals, and CTSCI group exhibited further deviation than ITSCI group compared to healthy individuals. Four serum biomarkers were found to be correlated with most differential genera. Patients with thoracic SCI present gut dysbiosis, which is more pronounced in patients with CTSCI than in those with ITSCI. Therefore, the gut microbiota profile may serve as the signatures for bowel and motor functions in patients with thoracic SCI.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Gut microbiota
• neurogenic bowel dysfunction
• serum biomarkers
• traumatic thoracic spinal cord injury

Highlights:

• We focused on gut dysbiosis in individuals with incomplete thoracic spinal cord injury (SCI).

• We found that there is a correlation between bowel dysfunction and SCI.

We propose that the gut microbes can be considered as therapeutic targets for varying degrees of SCI. (This is one of our highlights. Thank you)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key Research & Development Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China (grant no. 2018YFC2002300 and 2018YFC2002301), National Natural Science Foundation of the People’s Republic of China (grant no. 81773431), and Nanjing Municipal Science and Technology Bureau (grant no. 2019060002).