Research On Intestinal Flora Characteristics Of Patients With Chronic Schizophrenia

Objective To explore the characteristics of intestinal flora structure and metabolic pathway in patients with chronic schizophrenia and the possibility of intestinal flora as biomarkers in patients with chronic schizophrenia,and to explore the contribution of microfloral preparation to the treatment of chronic schizophrenia patients.Method Twenty-nine patients with chronic schizophrenia who were hospitalized in Hulunbuir Mental Health Center from January 2022 to December 2022 were included in the case group according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria,and 30 healthy people were recruited from society according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria as the control group.Statistically,16 S rDNA sequencing was performed by Illumina MiSeq 2500 sequencing platform,and the original sequencing data was saved in FASTQ format.QIIME2 software,R language script,Galaxy online analysis and other software and platforms were used for Alpha diversity analysis,Beta diversity analysis,significance analysis of inter-group differences and differential functional pathway prediction.SPSS 26.0 software was used for statistical analysis of the general data of patients.The measurement data were tested by two independent samples t test or non-parametric test.The statistical significance of the data was verified by chi-square test.All statistical tests were bilateral tests,and P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.Results(1)A total of 49,233 ASVs variants were obtained by Illumina MiSeq2500 sequencing,and 25,160(51.1%)ASVs variants were found in case variants.There were20514(41.67%)ASVs in the healthy control group and 3559(7.23%)ASVs in the two groups.(2)The results of Alpha diversity analysis showed that there were no significant differences in Chao1 index(P=0.19),Simpson index(P=0.55)and Shanoon index(P=0.47)between the two groups(P<0.05),indicating that there were no differences in the richness,evenness and diversity of intestinal flora between the case group and the control group.The results of Beta diversity analysis showed a significant difference in microflora composition between the case group and the control group.(3)LefSe analysis identified 50 representative dominant flora in the case group and 21 dominant flora in the control group.The dominant bacteria groups in the case group were Proteobacteria,Actinomyces,γ-Proteobacteria,Coriobacterriia,Enterobacteriaceae,Lactobacillus,Desulphurvibrio and Collinella,etc.In the control group,the dominant bacteria were Firmicutes,Clostridium,Clostridiales,Lachnospiracea and Ruminococcaceae.Furthermore,metagenomeSeq analysis was used to compare the up-regulated intestinal flora of the control group with that of the case group,including Firmicutes and Clostridium.Compared with the control group,the upregulation of the case group was Coriobacteriales.(4)Through the prediction of functional pathways,it was found that the most significant metabolic pathways of intestinal flora in the subjects included in this study(case group and control group)were glucose metabolism pathway,amino acid metabolism pathway and cell transformation pathway,and further identified that the geraniol degradation pathway may be a significantly different functional pathway in the case group.Conclusion The intestinal flora of patients with chronic schizophrenia may have its special composition and functional pathway characteristics,the Coriobacteriales may be chronic schizophrenia,and the geraniol degradation pathway may be the characteristic metabolic pathway of intestinal flora of patients with chronic schizophrenia.This study further confirmed the relationship between the gut-brain axis and the pathological mechanism of chronic schizophrenia,and provided a basis for further analysis of the involvement of intestinal flora in the disease process of chronic schizophrenia.