Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Sep 28, 2017; 23(36): 6665-6673
Published online Sep 28, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i36.6665
Faecal and mucosal microbiota in patients with functional gastrointestinal disorders: Correlation with toll-like receptor 2/toll-like receptor 4 expression
Li-Na Dong, Jun-Ping Wang, Ping Liu, Yun-Feng Yang, Jing Feng, Yi Han
Li-Na Dong, Central Laboratory, Shanxi Provincial People’s Hospital, Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan 030012, Shanxi Province, China
Jun-Ping Wang, Yun-Feng Yang, Jing Feng, Yi Han, Department of Gastroenterology, Shanxi Provincial People’s Hospital, Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan 030012, Shanxi Province, China
Ping Liu, Department of Gynaecology, Shanxi Provincial People’s Hospital, Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan 030012, Shanxi Province, China
Author contributions: Dong LN and Wang JP contributed equally to this study; they performed the majority of experiments, analysed the data, and drafted the manuscript; Wang JP and Liu P participated in the design of this study and reviewed the manuscript; Yang YF, Feng J and Han Y collected the specimens; all authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Supported by International Science and Technology Cooperation Project of Shanxi, No. 2013081066; Science Foundation of Health and Family Planning Commission of Shanxi Province; No. 201201059 and No. 201601014.
Institutional review board statement: The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Shanxi Provincial People’s Hospital.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: 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/
Correspondence to: Jun-Ping Wang, Professor, Department of Gastroenterology, Shanxi Provincial People’s Hospital, Shanxi Medical University, 29 Shuangta Road, Taiyuan 030012, Shanxi Province, China. wangjp8396@sohu.com
Telephone: +86-351-4960141
Received: June 12, 2017
Peer-review started: June 12, 2017
First decision: July 27, 2017
Revised: August 27, 2017
Accepted: September 5, 2017
Article in press: September 5, 2017
Published online: September 28, 2017
Core Tip

Core tip: To explore which bacteria regulate the expression of toll-like receptors (TLRs) and thereby affect intestinal functions, we performed high-throughput pyrosequencing of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene, compared the microbial communities in the faeces and mucosa of Chinese patients with functional gastrointestinal disorders, and studied their association with the expression of colonic mucosal TLR2 and TLR4. Samples of luminal microbiota were different from those of mucosa-associated microbiota (MAM), and MAM samples were closely associated with TLR2/4 expression. The abundance of Faecallibacterium and Ruminococcus was lower in patients with gut disease, while the expression of TLRs is higher than in healthy controls. The presence of Faecallibacterium and Ruminococcus was significantly and negatively correlated with TLR4 expression, suggesting that these two bacteria, which colonize on the colonic mucosa, play a key role in gut diseases by regulating mucosal TLR4 expression. Granulicatella, which belongs to Carnobacteriaceae, and Streptococcus, which belongs to Streptococcaceae, were inversely correlated with TLR2 expression. Because the two genera contained not only pathogenic species but also probiotic species, it will be important to establish a better understanding of the relationship between TLRs and bacterial strains in future studies.