Chronic fatigue syndrome patients have alterations in their oral microbiome composition and function, 2018, Wang et al

Sly Saint

Sly Saint

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Chronic fatigue syndrome patients have alterations in their oral microbiome composition and function
  • Taiwu Wang ,
  • Lei Yu ,
  • Cong Xu,
  • Keli Pan,
  • Minglu Mo,
  • Mingxiang Duan,
  • Yao Zhang ,
  • Hongyan Xiong
logo.plos.95.png

Abstract
Host–microbe interactions have been implicated in the pathogenesis of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), but whether the oral microbiome is altered in CFS patients is unknown. We explored alterations of the oral microbiome in Chinese Han CFS patients using 16S rRNA gene sequencing and alterations in the functional potential of the oral microbiome using PICRUSt.

We found that Shannon and Simpson diversity indices were not different in CFS patients compared to healthy controls, but the overall oral microbiome composition was different (MANOVA, p < 0.01). CFS patients had a higher relative abundance of Fusobacteria compared with healthy controls.

Further, the genera Leptotrichia, Prevotella, and Fusobacterium were enriched and Haemophilus, Veillonella, and Porphyromonas were depleted in CFS patients compared to healthy controls. Functional analysis from inferred metagenomes showed that bacterial genera altered in CFS patients were primarily associated with amino acid and energy metabolism. Our findings demonstrate that the oral microbiome in CFS patients is different from healthy controls, and these differences lead to shifts in functional pathways with implications for CFS pathogenesis.

These findings increase our understanding of the relationship between the oral microbiota and CFS, which will advance our understanding of CFS pathogenesis and may contribute to future improvements in treatment and diagnosis.
Click to expand...

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0203503
 
Do they know it leads to shifts in functional metabolic pathways? This is different from saying it’s associated. Could altered metabolic pathways lead to altered microbiome? Eg mitochondrial dysfunction leading to impaired immunity leading to altered microbiome, or altered response to glucose altering bacteria diet in mouth/gut leading to different microbiome composition?
 
Last edited:
Of the 236 KEGG pathways tested, 40 pathways differed in abundance between CFS patients and healthy controls. These 40 pathways represented different pathway levels. Specifically, no pathways in level 1, 6 pathways in level 2, and 55 pathways in level 3 were found to be significantly different between CFS patients and healthy control subjects. The level 2 pathways that distinguished CFS patients were “Biosynthesis of Other Secondary Metabolites,” “Energy Metabolism,” “Environmental Adaptation,” “Enzyme Families,” “Metabolic Diseases,” and “Metabolism of Other Amino Acids” (Fig 5)
Click to expand...

image


Prevolella looks interesting

Prevotella was positively associated with carbohydrate metabolism, cell motility, and immune system disease, and negatively associated with biosynthesis of other secondary metabolism, enzyme families, and nucleotide metabolism (Fig 5).
Click to expand...
 
We also examined associations between these altered genera and KEGG pathways and found some trends existed in the functional potential between the microbiota of CFS patients and healthy controls
Click to expand...
So are they saying controls who had similar microbiome also had similar metabolomics? That might indicate certain bacteria are causing problems. But then the controls presumably don’t have symptoms so does it indicate that?! Perhaps the microbiome and KEGG pathway results are both red herrings?

Referring to the bigger effect in ME gut studies (not oral)
In another study[20], the intestinal microbiota from Norwegian CFS patients had increased proportions of Lactonifactor and Alistipes, and decreased proportions of Holdemania and Syntrophococcus, while the intestinal microbiota from Belgian CFS patients showed increased Lactonifactor and decreased Asaccharobacter.
Click to expand...
So cultural/regional differences in the nature of the differences but with same symptoms might infer microbiome differences are downstream of the root cause depending on diet?
 
Haemophilus, along with Veillonella and Prevotella, have also been found altered in oral lesions[37] and in the oral microbiome of human immunodeficiency virus positive individuals[38]
Click to expand...

Furthermore, of gene pathways analyzed, those related immune system and infectious diseases were significantly associated with many genera that had altered abundance in CFS patients, especially Prevotella, Haemophilus, and Veillonella (p ≤ 0.001). This might suggest these three genera are especially important to CFS pathogenesis.
Click to expand...

But We don’t think HIV is caused by microbiome issues, so this seems more indication that this is something that can happen as a consequence of altered immune function not suggesting it’s key to CFS pathogenesis?
 
Last edited:
Our study only identified oral microbiome variation between CFS patients and healthy controls but did not identify confounding factors such as disease severity, disease duration, and medical treatments received.
Click to expand...

I’d say these are subtyping factors rather than confounding factors and may contain the most important information. Eg what would this look like split pre and post 3 year duration?

It would be great if researchers consistently subgrouped by these factors, instead of just listing the limitation (it doesn’t seem like this would take substantially more time and money and could result in important, extra publications from the same project).
 
Last edited:
Merged thread

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0203503

the overall microbiome composition was different (MANOVA, p < 0.01). CFS patients had a higher relative abundance of Fusobacteria compared with healthy controls. Further, the genera Leptotrichia, Prevotella, and Fusobacterium were enriched and Haemophilus, Veillonella, and Porphyromonas were depleted in CFS patients compared to healthy controls. Functional analysis from inferred metagenomes showed that bacterial genera altered in CFS patients were primarily associated with amino acid and energy metabolism.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I don't think this study found something robust. They themselves highlight that differences were minor...

It's exciting though to have a Chinese research team studying mecfs. Lets hope they will stick around!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom