Background: Recently, it has been found that the gut microbiota may affect the development of lung cancer through the "gut-lung axis." To investigate this relationship, we performed this study to determine whether the gut microbiota in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients is different from that in healthy adults.
Methods: Quantitative PCR (qPCR) was used to detect the expression levels of eight gut butyrate-producing bacteria in healthy adults and NSCLC patients. We enrolled 30 patients with NSCLC and 30 subjects from 100 healthy adults after matching for age and sex.
Results: Compared to healthy adults, most of the gut butyrate-producing bacteria in NSCLC patients were significantly decreased; these included Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, Clostridium leptum, Clostridial cluster I, Ruminococcus spp., Clostridial Cluster XIVa, and Roseburia spp. Among the gut butyrate-producing bacteria, we analyzed Clostridial cluster IV and Eubacterium rectale were not decreased in NSCLC patients.
Conclusions: We conclude that NSCLC patients had gut butyrate-producing bacteria dysbiosis. Further studies should be performed to investigate the underlying mechanisms of how these specific bacteria affect lung cancer progression and prognosis.
Keywords: butyrate-producing bacteria; dysbiosis; gut microbiota; gut-lung axis; non-small-cell lung cancer.
© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Clinical Laboratory Analysis published by Wiley Periodicals, LLC.