Characteristics of gut microbiota in patients with asthenozoospermia: a Chinese pilot study
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Quality control
- Retracted paper
- Contamination issues suspected
- Batch effect issues suspected
- Uncontrolled confounding suspected
- Results are suspect (various reasons)
- Tags applied
Gut microbiota could play a role in human immune and causative agent resistance [3, 4]. Gut microbiota dysbiosis is usually associated with an abnormality in microbial diversity, resulting in inflammation and autoimmune diseases [5, 6]. Moreover, intestinal flora participates in the regulation of inflammatory and immune protection in many organs such as the brain and testes [7, 8].
Gut microbiota dysbiosis could affect the integrity of the blood-testis barrier (BTB), eventually impairing testicular spermatogenic processes by potential mechanisms below. On one hand, the testes usually cannot synthesize nutrients themselves. Blood vessels in the testes transport nutrients, including those synthesized or metabolized by the gut microbiota, from the digestive system to the testicular interstitium. These nutrients, such as vitamins and minerals, are vital for normal testicular function [9]. Gut microbiota dysbiosis may disturb the original nutritional structure and subsequently affect testicular function [10]. On the other hand, gut microbiota dysbiosis may result in a chronic inflammatory status and excessive immunological response that disrupts the spermatogenic processes in the testes [11]. For example, gut microbiota dysbiosis could cause abnormal intestinal permeability and increase lipopolysaccharide (LPS) levels in the blood. The increased LPS can induce innate immunity and activate testicular LPS/TLR4/MyD88/NF-κB pathways [12]. This process can induce testicular endothelial injury and damage the BTB, eventually impairing spermatogenesis.
Identifying intestinal flora composition is significant for understanding the causes and pathogenic mechanism of the gut-testis axis and clarifying the relationship between the microflora and infertility. There are few reports on specifically investigating the gut microbiota characteristics in isolated AS patients. Hence, our study aimed to examine the microbiota characteristics in the gut of AS patients and discover the potentially key gut microbiota associated with the development of AS.
Experiment 1
Subjects
- Location of subjects
- China
- Host species Species from which microbiome was sampled. Contact us to have more species added.
- 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,feces
- Condition The experimental condition / phenotype studied according to the Experimental Factor Ontology
- Abnormal sperm morphology Abnormal shape of sperm,Teratospermia,Teratozoospermia,Abnormal sperm morphology,abnormal sperm morphology
- Group 0 name Corresponds to the control (unexposed) group for case-control studies
- Healthy Control
- Group 1 name Corresponds to the case (exposed) group for case-control studies
- Asthenozoospermia
- Group 1 definition Diagnostic criteria applied to define the specific condition / phenotype represented in the case (exposed) group
- Patients with reduced sperm mortility
- Group 0 sample size Number of subjects in the control (unexposed) group
- 60
- Group 1 sample size Number of subjects in the case (exposed) group
- 48
- Antibiotics exclusion Number of days without antibiotics usage (if applicable) and other antibiotics-related criteria used to exclude participants (if any)
- 6 months
Lab analysis
- Sequencing type
- 16S
- 16S variable region One or more hypervariable region(s) of the bacterial 16S gene
- V3-V4
- 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).
- relative abundances
- Statistical test
- LEfSe
- 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)?
- No
- LDA Score above Threshold for the linear discriminant analysis (LDA) score for studies using the popular LEfSe tool
- 3
Alpha Diversity
- Shannon Estimator of species richness and species evenness: more weight on species richness
- unchanged
- Chao1 Abundance-based estimator of species richness
- decreased
- Richness Number of species
- decreased
- Faith Phylogenetic diversity, takes into account phylogenetic distance of all taxa identified in a sample
- decreased
Signature 1
Source: Figure 5B
Description: The differentially expressed gut microbiota identified by LEfSe analysis
Abundance in Group 1: increased abundance in Asthenozoospermia
Signature 2
Source: Figure 5B
Description: The differentially expressed gut microbiota identified by LEfSe analysis
Abundance in Group 1: decreased abundance in Asthenozoospermia
