Alterations and Correlations of Gut Microbiota and Fecal Metabolome Characteristics in a Rabbit Model of Intervertebral Disc Degeneration

Fecal DNA was extracted from 16 fecal samples (8 rabbit models with IDD and 8 sex- and age-matched healthy controls) and analyzed by high-throughput 16S rDNA sequencing. The fecal samples were also analyzed by liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS)-based metabolomics. Multivariate analyses were conducted for the relationship between the omics data and IDD, including principal coordinate analysis (PCoA), principal component analysis (PCA), orthogonal partial least-squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA), and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). Linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) was employed for biomarker discovery. Moreover, the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) database was used to annotate the differential metabolites. The potential correlation between differential gut microbiota and metabolites was then assessed.