Therapeutic Effects of complementary medicine on the gut intestinal Microbiome in Model Arthritis. rat gut metagenome

Acupuncture is routinely used as a complementary therapy to methotrexate in the treatment of Rheumatoid arthritis (RA). RA is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease with an increasing incidence and etiopathogenesis still unknown. However, the microorganisms that live inside and on humans (known as the microbiome) are considered to have a profound influence on human. Modeled with rats and collagen induced arthritis, based on high-throughput 16S rRNA gene sequencing data, we explored the specific correlation between the gut intestinal (GI) microbiome and the activity of the immune system during acupuncture and acupuncture+methotrexate treatment on RA.