Fecal Metabolomic Signatures in Colorectal Adenoma Patients Are Associated with Gut Microbiota and Early Events of Colorectal Cancer Pathogenesis

Study information

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study design

case-control

Citation

PMID PubMed identifier for scientific articles.

32071266

DOI Digital object identifier for electronic documents.

10.1128/mBio.03186-19

URI Uniform resource identifier for web resources.

Authors

Kim M, Vogtmann E, Ahlquist DA, Devens ME, Kisiel JB, Taylor WR, White BA, Hale VL, Sung J, Chia N, Sinha R, Chen J

Journal

mBio

Year

2020

Colorectal adenomas are precancerous lesions of colorectal cancer (CRC) that offer a means of viewing the events key to early CRC development. A number of studies have investigated the changes and roles of gut microbiota in adenoma and carcinoma development, highlighting its impact on carcinogenesis. However, there has been less of a focus on the gut metabolome, which mediates interactions between the host and gut microbes. Here, we investigated metabolomic profiles of stool samples from patients with advanced adenoma (n = 102), matched controls (n = 102), and patients with CRC (n = 36). We found that several classes of bioactive lipids, including polyunsaturated fatty acids, secondary bile acids, and sphingolipids, were elevated in the adenoma patients compared to the controls. Most such metabolites showed directionally consistent changes in the CRC patients, suggesting that those changes may represent early events of carcinogenesis. We also examined gut microbiome-metabolome associations using gut microbiota profiles in these patients. We found remarkably strong overall associations between the microbiome and metabolome data and catalogued a list of robustly correlated pairs of bacterial taxa and metabolomic features which included signatures of adenoma. Our findings highlight the importance of gut metabolites, and potentially their interplay with gut microbes, in the early events of CRC pathogenesis.IMPORTANCE Colorectal adenomas are precursors of CRC. Recently, the gut microbiota, i.e., the collection of microbes residing in our gut, has been recognized as a key player in CRC development. There have been a number of gut microbiota profiling studies for colorectal adenoma and CRC; however, fewer studies have considered the gut metabolome, which serves as the chemical interface between the host and gut microbiota. Here, we conducted a gut metabolome profiling study of colorectal adenoma and CRC and analyzed the metabolomic profiles together with paired microbiota composition profiles. We found several chemical signatures of colorectal adenoma that were associated with some gut microbes and potentially indicative of future CRC. This study highlights potential early-driver metabolites in CRC pathogenesis and guides further targeted experiments and thus provides an important stepping stone toward developing better CRC prevention strategies.

Experiment 1

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Curated date: 2023/03/16

Curator: Suwaiba

Revision editor(s): Suwaiba

Subjects

Location of subjects: United States of America

Host species Species from which microbiome was sampled (if applicable): Homo sapiens

Body site Anatomical site where microbial samples were extracted from according to the Uber Anatomy Ontology: Feces Cow dung,Cow pat,Droppings,Dung,Excrement,Excreta,Faeces,Fecal material,Fecal matter,Fewmet,Frass,Guano,Matières fécales@fr,Merde@fr,Ordure,Partie de la merde@fr,Piece of shit,Porción de mierda@es,Portion of dung,Portion of excrement,Portion of faeces,Portion of fecal material,Portion of fecal matter,Portion of feces,Portion of guano,Portion of scat,Portionem cacas,Scat,Spoor,Spraint,Stool,Teil der fäkalien@de,Feces

Condition The experimental condition / phenotype studied according to the Experimental Factor Ontology: colorectal cancer cancer of colorectum,cancer of large bowel,cancer of large intestine,cancer of the large bowel,colon cancer,colorectal cancer,colorectum cancer,CRC,large intestine cancer,malignant colorectal neoplasm,malignant colorectal tumor,malignant colorectum neoplasm,malignant large bowel neoplasm,malignant large bowel tumor,malignant large intestine neoplasm,malignant large intestine tumor,malignant neoplasm of colorectum,malignant neoplasm of large bowel,malignant neoplasm of large intestine,malignant neoplasm of the large bowel,malignant neoplasm of the large intestine,malignant tumor of large bowel,malignant tumor of large intestine,malignant tumor of the large bowel,malignant tumor of the large intestine

Group 0 name Corresponds to the control (unexposed) group for case-control studies: Matched controls
Group 1 name Corresponds to the case (exposed) group for case-control studies: Patients with adenoma
Group 1 definition Diagnostic criteria applied to define the specific condition / phenotype represented in the case (exposed) group: Patients with one or more advanced colorectal adenomas
Group 0 sample size Number of subjects in the control (unexposed) group: 102
Group 1 sample size Number of subjects in the case (exposed) group: 102

Lab analysis

Sequencing type: 16S

16S variable region One or more hypervariable region(s) of the bacterial 16S gene: V3-V5

Sequencing platform Manufacturer and experimental platform used for quantifying microbial abundance: Illumina

Statistical Analysis

Data transformation Data transformation applied to microbial abundance measurements prior to differential abundance testing (if any).

arcsine square-root

Statistical test

PERMANOVA

Significance threshold p-value or FDR threshold used for differential abundance testing (if any): 0.05
MHT correction Have statistical tests be corrected for multiple hypothesis testing (MHT)?: Yes
Matched on Factors on which subjects have been matched on in a case-control study: age, race, sex
Confounders controlled for Confounding factors that have been accounted for by stratification or model adjustment: age, race, sex, Confounders controlled for: "history of smoking" is not in the list (abnormal glucose tolerance, acetaldehyde, acute graft vs. host disease, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, acute myeloid leukemia, adenoma, age, AIDS, alcohol consumption measurement, alcohol drinking, ...) of allowed values.history of smoking

Alpha Diversity

Shannon Estimator of species richness and species evenness: more weight on species richness: unchanged
Richness Number of species: unchanged

Signature 1

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Curated date: 2023/03/16

Curator: Suwaiba

Revision editor(s): Suwaiba

Source: Table S1

Description: Processed bacterial abundance data used in this study (genus-level, arcsine square root transformed)

Abundance in Group 1: increased abundance in Patients with adenoma

NCBI	Links
Bacteroides �
Bilophila ✕�
Butyricimonas �
Dorea �
Eubacterium �
Odoribacter �
Paludibacter
Parabacteroides �
Paraprevotella �
Prevotella �

Revision editor(s): Suwaiba