Sexual dimorphism of gut microbiota dictates therapeutics efficacy of radiation injuries [RNA-seq]

Accidental or iatrogenic ionizing radiation exposure precipitates acute and chronic radiation injuries. Traditional paradigm of mitigating radiotherapy-associated side effects has ignored the gender-specific dimorphism of patients. Here we examined the effects of sexual dimorphism on therapeutic agent efficiencies in murine models. High-throughput sequencing of host mRNA showed that different treatments reprogrammed the spectrum of mRNA expression in small intestines of male or female mice, respectively. Collectively, our observations demonstrate that therapeutic strategy efficiencies for radiation toxicity might be dependent on the gender of patients. We aim to uncover the underlying mechanisms by which simvastatin or high fat diet fights against radiotherapy-induced gastrointestinal tract toxicity for male or female mice. The mice were exposed to 12 Gy total abdominal irradiation (TAI), then treated with simvastatin for male mice or fed with high fat diet for female mice. The small intestine tissues were extracted from male mice without TAI, exposed to TAI only, and exposed to TAI combined with simvastatin treatment as one cohort, and from female mice without TAI, exposed to TAI only, and exposed to TAI combined with high fat diet feeding as the other cohort. Overall design: Examination of mRNA profile of small intestine from male mice (without irradiation, total abdominal irradiation or total abdominal irradiation combined with simvastatin treatment) and female mice (without irradiation, total abdominal irradiation or total abdominal irradiation combined with high fat diet).