Correlation analysis for the alterations of intestinal flora and their metabolite in hepatocellular carcinoma patients

Abstract

Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common malignant tumors in the world. There are a variety of treatment options for HCC, such as hepatectomy, radio frequency ablation, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, liver transplantation, etc. However, due to the characteristics of low early diagnosis rate, high malignancy and rapid progression of HCC, the majority of diagnosed patients are in the middle or late stage.Therefore, new research ideas are needed for the prevention, diagnosis and prognosis of HCC. Accumulating evidence reveals that liver disease patients show different intestinal flora composition compared to healthy people and the change of intestinal flora may promote the carcinogensis of HCC via disturbing immune regulation. Here, we studied the differences in intestinal floras composition and interleukin(IL) indexes between HCC patients and healthy people. A total of 64 HCC patients and 24 healthy people were recruited, and their fresh stool samples and serum samples were collected for 16S rRNA sequencing and metabolite index measurement. Our data showed that 484 operational taxonomic units༈OTUs༉ and 476 OTUs were detected in the HCC and control groups, respectively. Moreover, we found that most liver function indexes, IL-6 and IL-10 expression levels were significantly different between the two groups. Of note, the abundances of Actinomycetes, Faecalibacterium, Lactobacilli and Bacteroides were significantly higher in HCC group than the control group, and the change was associated with increased plasma levels of IL-6, IL-10 and IL-12 in HCC patients. In conclusion,the abundance of intestinal floras in the HCC group was different from the control group. Additionally, in HCC patients, the expression levels of IL-6 and IL-10 were higher than health people, and the difference showed a strong correlation to the abundance of some intestinal floras.