Integrated untargeted fecal metabolomics and gut microbiota strategy for screening potential biomarkers associated with schizophrenia

Schizophrenia (SZ) is a serious neurodevelopmental disorder. As the etiology of SZ is complex and the pathogenesis is not thoroughly understood, the diagnosis of different subtypes still depends on the subjective judgment of doctors. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop early objective laboratory diagnostic biomarkers to screen different subtypes of patients as early as possible, and to implement targeted prevention and precision medicine to reduce the risk of SZ and improve the life quality of patients. In this study, untargeted metabolomics and 16S rDNA sequencing were used to analyze the differences in metabolites and gut microflora among 28 patients with two types of schizophrenia and 11 healthy subjects.