Li YN, Kang NL, Jiang JJ, Zhu YY, Liu YR, Zeng DW, Wang F. Gut microbiota of hepatitis B virus-infected patients in the immune-tolerant and immune-active phases and their implications in metabolite changes. World J Gastroenterol 2022; 28(35): 5188-5202 [PMID: 36188719 DOI: 10.3748/wjg.v28.i35.5188]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Da-Wu Zeng, MD, Associate Chief Physician, Associate Professor, Department of Hepatology, Hepatology Research Institute, The First Affiliated Hospital, Fujian Medical University, No. 20 Chazhong Road, Fuzhou 350001, Fujian Province, China. zengdw1980@fjmu.edu.cn
Research Domain of This Article
Infectious Diseases
Article-Type of This Article
Observational Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Ya-Nan Li, Na-Ling Kang, Jia-Ji Jiang, Yue-Yong Zhu, Yu-Rui Liu, Da-Wu Zeng, Department of Hepatology, Hepatology Research Institute, The First Affiliated Hospital, Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou 350001, Fujian Province, China
Fei Wang, Department of Pharmacy, Fujian Geriatric Hospital, Fuzhou 350001, Fujian Province, China
Author contributions: Zeng DW and Liu YR conceived and designed the experiments; Zeng DW and Li YN performed the experiments; Li YN, Kang NL, and Wang F analyzed the data; Zhu YY and Jiang JJ contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools; Zeng DW and Li YN wrote the manuscript.
Supported bythe Fujian Provincial Health Technology Project, No. 2019-ZQN-60; and the Fujian Provincial Department of Science and Technology, No. 2019J01432.
Institutional review board statement: Institutional review board approval of our hospital was obtained for this study.
Informed consent statement: All patients involved in this study gave their informed consent.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE statement, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE statement.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Da-Wu Zeng, MD, Associate Chief Physician, Associate Professor, Department of Hepatology, Hepatology Research Institute, The First Affiliated Hospital, Fujian Medical University, No. 20 Chazhong Road, Fuzhou 350001, Fujian Province, China. zengdw1980@fjmu.edu.cn
Received: April 12, 2022 Peer-review started: April 12, 2022 First decision: July 13, 2022 Revised: July 26, 2022 Accepted: August 22, 2022 Article in press: August 22, 2022 Published online: September 21, 2022 Processing time: 151 Days and 7.2 Hours
Abstract
BACKGROUND
The microbes and metabolomics of microbiota dysbiosis in the gut in the different phases of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection are not fully understood.
AIM
To investigate the specific gut microbiota and metabolites of the immune-tolerant (IT) and immune-active (IA) phases of chronic hepatitis B (CHB).
METHODS
Clinical fecal samples from healthy individuals and patients in the IT and IA phases of HBV infection were collected. Next, non-target metabolomics, bioinformatics, and 16S rDNA sequencing analyses were performed.
RESULTS
A total of 293 different metabolites in 14 phyla, 22 classes, 29 orders, 51 families, and 190 genera were identified. The four phyla of Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria, and Proteobacteria were the most abundant, accounting for 99.72%, 99.79%, and 99.55% in the healthy controls, IT-phase patients, and IA-phase patients, respectively. We further identified 16 genera with different richness in the IT phase and IA phase of HBV infection. Of the 134 named metabolites, 57 were upregulated and 77 were downregulated. A total of 101 different metabolic functions were predicted in this study, with 6 metabolic pathways having the highest enrichments, namely carbohydrate metabolism (14.85%), amino acid metabolism (12.87%), lipid metabolism (11.88%), metabolism of cofactors and vitamins (11.88%), xenobiotic biodegradation (9.9%), and metabolism of terpenoids and polyketides (7.92%).
CONCLUSION
These findings provide observational evidence of compositional alterations of the gut microbiome and some related metabolites in patients with IT-phase or IA-phase HBV infection. Further studies should investigate whether microbiota modulation can facilitate the progression of CHB and the cause-effect relationship between the gut microbiota and CHB.
Core Tip: This article provided observational evidence of compositional alterations of gut microbiome and some related metabolite in patients with immune-tolerant phase hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection and immune-active phase HBV infection.
