Disruption of the human gut microbiota affectedby ulcerative colitis

Abstract

Objective: The stability of the intestinal flora is an important guarantee for maintaining human health.Whether it will disturb the stability of the flora after ulcerative colitis (UC) is worth exploring.Methods: An observational study was performed to evaluate the disruption of the human gut microbiota affected by UC. Chromosomal DNA was extracted, and the length of DNA fragments was examined and quantified. Gene amplification and sequencing of the V3 region of 16S rRNA were subsequently performed by Illumina’s MiSeq sequencer for high-throughput sequencing.Results: The structure of intestinal flora in UC patients exhibited a significant increase of Proteobacteriaand a remarkable decrease of Bacteroidetes compared with that of healthy controls. Among each genusin the Proteobacteria, UC patients exhibited a significant decrease of Alcaligenaceae (55.08% ± 13.90 to 0.56% ± 0.04) and a remarkable increase of Enterobacteriaceae (6.64% ± 10.22 to 98.05% ± 3.28) compared with that of healthy controls. Our results demonstrated that the disorder of the intestinal flora is associated with UC patients.Conclusions: Therefore, UC patients exhibited a significant shift in the dominance of the gut microbiota,and restoring the homeostasis of the intestinal flora may be an important target for the treatment of UC and alleviation of symptoms.