Implication of the gut microbiome composition of type 2 diabetic patients from northern China

Emerging evidence suggested the association of gut microbiome with some human diseases including type 2 diabetes (T2D). In this study, we analyzed the gut microbiota in a cohort of healthy and diabetic Chinese individuals in North China. Pyrosequencing of the V4V5 region of 16S rRNA genes revealed a significant decreased in the gut microbiota diversity of diabetic patients compared with healthy controls. Butyrate-producing bacteria like Bifidobacterium and Akkermansia significantly decreased in diabetic patients. Furthermore, the abundance of Dorea was significantly increased in T2D individuals and negatively correlated with those butyrate-producing bacteria. The increasing of Dorea could play a role in T2D development and has been overlooked before. Importantly, the potential ability of gut-microbiota-based classifier to identify individuals with high risk for T2D has been proved by our study. Taken together, our findings revealed previously unknown information about the association of gut microbiota with diabetes and suggested that the changes in gut microbiota may potentially be used to identify individuals with high risk for T2D.