Correlation between differences in the intestinal flora structure and Chinese medicine evidence in patients with Wilson disease-related liver fibrosis analyzed via high-throughput sequencing technology

Abstract

To observe the composition and abundance of the intestinal flora in patients with Wilson disease (WD)-related liver fibrosis and analyze the correlation between the composition of intestinal flora of patients and the evolution of evidence from Chinese medicine, we selected 237 patients with WD-related liver fibrosis and 30 healthy volunteers from the Brain Disease Center of Anhui Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine. The patients with WD-related liver fibrosis were divided into 5 groups according to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) evidence (dampness-heat syndrome, group A; intermingled phlegm and blood stasis syndrome, group B; liver wind stirring up internally syndrome, group C; yin deficiency of the liver and kidney syndrome, group D; and yang deficiency of the spleen and kidney syndrome, group E) and a group healthy volunteers (group F), which served as the control. Stool samples were obtained from the patients in the 6 groups. The 16S rRNA sequencing technique was used to analyze the intestinal flora of the different TCM evidence groups of WD patients and the healthy control group and subjected to a statistical analysis. The intestinal flora abundance was significantly lower in patients with WD-related liver fibrosis than in healthy controls, and the decrease in strain content was more significant in patients with deficiency evidence in groups D and E. In terms of the structure of the phylum-level flora, the Firmicutes phylum was still the dominant phylum, but the contents of the evidence-type groups all decreased, with the most obvious decreases in groups D and E. The results for the Actinobacteria phylum were similar, whereas the opposite was true for the Proteobacteria phylum. The section-level and genus-level results corresponded to the gate level. The intestinal flora of the WD-related liver fibrosis patients and healthy controls differed in terms of abundance and intestinal flora structure, and there were also differences between different Chinese medicine certificates.