Alterations in gut microbiota of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma patients

Abstract

Background and Aim: Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is the most common histological subtype of esophageal cancer worldwide. Patients with ESCC display an altered esophageal microbiota compared with healthy individuals; however, little is known about the gut microbiota in ESCC. Methods: Here, we characterized the fecal microbiota of 15 ESCC patients and 16 healthy control subjects using 16S rRNA gene sequencing.Results: After controlling for potential confounders, significant alterations in both taxonomic and functional composition of the gut microbiota in ESCC patients were observed. By contrast, alpha diversity of the gut microbiota did not significantly differ between the cases and controls. We observed an enrichment of potentially pro-inflammatory and/or carcinogenic bacteria, such as Butyricimonas, Veillonella, and Streptococcus, and a depletion of butyrate-producing and/or potentially anti-inflammatory bacteria, such as Butyricicoccus, Lachnospiraceae NK4A136 group, and Eubacterium eligens group, in the gut microbiota of ESCC patients. The log-ratios of Streptococcus to Butyricicoccus and Streptococcus to Lachnospiraceae NK4A136 group of the gut microbiota were identified as potential diagnostic biomarkers for ESCC, with an area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) of 0.863 (95% confidence interval: 0.707-1.000) and 0.825 (0.673-0.977), respectively. The diagnostic performance of both microbial biomarkers was validated in another ESCC cohort. Conclusions: This pilot study has revealed an altered gut microbiota in ESCC patients and has paved the way for large-scale prospective cohort studies to examine the causative relationship between ESCC and gut dysbiosis.recruited study subjects; MKC performed the experiments and data analysis, and drafted the manuscript; GGLY coordinated the project; PWYC and CBSL acquired funding for the project; CBSL supervised the project; SCN, HCY, HSK, PWYC and CBSL critically revised the manuscript. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript.

The effect of Andrographis paniculata water extract on palliative management of metastatic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma—A phase II clinical trial

“…Another important finding from our study is the alteration of the gut microbiota in ESCC patients along the course of AP treatment. This agrees with our previous findings in xenograft‐bearing mice (Cheung et al, 2020) and may be partially attributed to the antimicrobial activity of AP (Chuah et al, 2017). Previously, we have revealed dysbiosis of the gut microbiota in ESCC patients (Cheung, Yue, Lauw et al, 2022).…”

“…Alpha diversity metrics computed included the number of observed ASVs, Faith's PD, Pielou's evenness, and Shannon's diversity, whereas Bray–Curtis dissimilarity and weighted UniFrac distance were computed for beta diversity estimation. Gut microbiome data were compared (1) between longitudinal samples of the same patients and (2) against five sex‐, age‐, and BMI‐matched healthy subjects from our previous study (Cheung, Yue, Lauw, et al, 2022).…”

“…(1) between longitudinal samples of the same patients and (2) against five sex-, age-, and BMI-matched healthy subjects from our previous study (Cheung, Yue, Lauw, et al, 2022).…”

“…(Fleming, 1982). Stool samples were processed as previously described (Cheung, Yue, Lauw, et al, 2022). In brief, stool samples were collected by the subjects at home, immediately frozen at À20 C, and stored at À80 C in the laboratory until DNA extraction.…”

“…Sequence reads were processed and analyzed with QIIME2 2020.2 (Bolyen et al, 2019) as previously described (Cheung, Yue, Lauw, et al, 2022). In brief, primers were first removed from the demultiplexed raw sequence data.…”