Gut microbiota composition and frailty in elderly patients with Chronic Kidney Disease

Frailty is common condition in aged patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). We investigated the gut microbiota composition in order to evaluate possible impact correlation between microbial population and disease and /or frailty. We collected fecal samples from studied 64 CKD patients (stage 3b-4), categorized as frail (F, 38) and not frail (NF, 26) according to Fried criteria. Moreover 15 subjects representing the control group (C) were included in this study. All subjects were older than 65 years. The gut microbiota was studied by high-throughput sequencing (V2-V3 regions of16S rRNA gene).No differences in alpha diversity between CKD and C and between F and NF patients were found but metabarcoding analysis showed higher significant relative abundance of some genera such as Citrobacter and Coprobacillus. Moreover, a reduction in relative abundance of saccharolytic and butyrate-producing bacteria such as Prevotella, F. prausnitzii, Roseburia was detected, in CKD respect to C. A positive correlation was found between some group of bacteria (e.g. Mogibacteriaceae and Oscillospira) and inflammatory indices that were negatively related to relative abundance of Akkermansia, Ruminococcus and Eubacterium. These results suggest that inflammation and frailty could be associated to gut microbiota modifications in CKD.