mNFE: Microbiome network flow entropy for detecting pre-disease states of type 1 diabetes

Abstract

Background In the development of Type 1 diabetes (T1D), there are critical states just before drastic changes, and identifying these pre-disease states may predict T1D or provide crucial early-warning signals. Unlike gene expression data, gut microbiome data can be collected noninvasively from stool samples. Gut microbiome sequencing data contain different levels of phylogenetic information that can be utilized to detect the tipping point in a reliable manner, thereby providing more accurate and effective early-warning signals. However, it is still difficult to detect the critical state of T1D based on gut microbiome data due to generally non-significant differences between healthy and critical states.Results To address this problem, we proposed a new method—microbiome network flow entropy (mNFE) based on a single sample from each individual—for detecting the critical state before seroconversion and abrupt transitions of T1D at various taxonomic levels. The numerical simulation validated the robustness of mNFE under different noise levels. Furthermore, based on real datasets, mNFE successfully identified the critical states and their dynamic network biomarkers (DNBs) at different taxonomic levels. In addition, we found some high-frequency species, which are closely related to the unique clinical characteristics of autoantibodies at the four levels, and identify some non-differential ‘dark species’ play important roles during the T1D progression.Conclusions mNFE can robustly and effectively detect the pre-disease states at various taxonomic levels and identify the corresponding DNBs with only a single sample for each individual. Therefore, our mNFE method provides a new approach for personalized pre-disease diagnosis and further for T1D preventative treatment by gut microbiome.