An Evaluation Method of Human Gut Microbial Homeostasis by Testing Specific Fecal Microbiota

Research on microecology has been carried out with broad perspectives in recent decades,which has enabled a better understanding of the gut microbiota and its roles in human health and disease.It is of great significance to routinely acquire the status of the human gut microbiota;however,there is no method to evaluate the gut microbiome through small amounts of fecal microbes.In this study,we found ten predominant groups of gut bacteria that characterized the whole microbiome in the human gut from a large-sample Chinese cohort,constructed a real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction(qPCR)method and developed a set of analytical approaches to detect these ten groups of predominant gut bacterial species with great maneuverability,efficiency,and quantitative features.Reference ranges for the ten predominant gut bacterial groups were established,and we found that the concentration and pairwise ratios of the ten predominant gut bacterial groups varied with age,indicating gut microbial dysbiosis.By comparing the detection results of liver cirrhosis(LC)patients with those of healthy control subjects,differences were then analyzed,and a classification model for the two groups was built by machine learning.Among the six established classification models,the model established by using the random forest algorithm achieved the highest area under the curve(AUC)value and sensitivity for predicting LC.This research enables easy,rapid,stable,and reliable testing and evaluation of the balance of the gut microbiota in the human body,which may contribute to clinical work.

The Relationship Between the Gut Microbiome and Neurodegen-erative Diseases

Many recent studies have shown that the gut microbiome plays important roles in human physiology and pathology.Also,microbiome-based therapies have been used to improve health status and treat diseases.In addition,aging and neurodegenerative diseases,including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease,have become topics of intense interest in biomedical research.Several researchers have explored the links between these topics to study the potential pathogenic or therapeutic effects of intestinal microbiota in disease.But the exact relationship between neurodegenerative diseases and gut microbiota remains unclear.As technology advances,new techniques for studying the microbiome will be developed and refined,and the relationship between diseases and gut microbiota will be revealed.This article summarizes the known interactions between the gut microbiome and neurodegenerative diseases,highlighting assay techniques for the gut microbiome,and we also discuss the potential therapeutic role of microbiome-based therapies in diseases.

Micro-ecology restoration of colonic inflammation by in-Situ oral delivery of antibody-laden hydrogel microcapsules

In-situ oral delivery of therapeutic antibodies,like monoclonal antibody,for chronic inflammation treatment is the most convenient approach compared with other administration routes.Moreover,the abundant links between the gut microbiota and colonic inflammation indicate that the synergistic or antagonistic effect of gut microbiota to colonic inflammation.However,the antibody activity would be significantly affected while transferring through the gastrointestinal tract due to hostile conditions.Moreover,these antibodies have short serum half-lives,thus,require to be frequently administered with high doses to be effective,leading to low patient tolerance.Here,we develop a strategy utilizing thin shell hydrogel microcapsule fabricated by microfluidic technique as the oral delivering carrier.By encapsulating antibodies in these microcapsules,antibodies survive in the hostile gastrointestinal environment and rapidly release into the small intestine through oral administration route,achieving the same therapeutic effect as the intravenous injection evaluated by a colonic inflammation disease model.Moreover,the abundance of some intestinal microorganisms as the indication of the improvement of inflammation has remarkably altered after in-situ antibody-laden microcapsules delivery,implying the restoration of micro-ecology of the intestine.These findings prove our microcapsules are exploited as an efficient oral delivery agent for antibodies with programmable function in clinical application.