Non-invasive ventilation restores the gut microbiota in rats with acute heart failure

Heart failure (HF) is an increasingly prevalent disease in humans; it induces multiple symptoms and damages health. Animal gut microbiota has critical roles in host health, which could be related to HF symptoms. Currently, several options are used to treat HF, including non-invasive ventilation (NIV). However, studies on gut microbiota responses to acute HF and associated treatments effects on gut communities in patients are scarce. Here, we examined gut microbiota variations in rats with acute HF and treated by NIV at the short (one week after treatments) and long-term periods (three month after treatments), respectively, by the high-throughput sequencing based on bacterial 16S rRNA gene. According to the comparison of alpha diversity of gut microbiota, we observed decreased gut microbiota richness and diversity in animals with acute HF comapred to normal individuals. Additionally, beta-diversity analysis also revealed significant alterations in the gut microbiota composition inducing by acute HF, as reflected by increased Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes (F/B) ratios and Proteobacteria enrichment. When we combined network analysis results and the null model, we observed decreased stability and elevated deterministic gut microbiota assemblies in animals with acute HF. Importantly, in short- and long-term periods, in acute HF rats, we showed that NIV recovered gut microbiota dysbiosis to normal states. Finally, we showed that considerable gut microbiota variations existed in rats with acute HF, that underlying microbiota mechanisms regulated these changes, and confirmed that NIV was suitable for HF treatment. In future studies, our findings should be validated with different model systems or clinical samples.