The assessment of potentially confounding factors affecting colon microbiota composition is essential to the identification of robust microbiome based disease markers. Here, we investigate the link between gut microbiota variation and stool consistency using Bristol Stool Scale classification, which reflects faecal water content and activity, and is considered a proxy for intestinal colon transit time.
published in Gut microbiota
Results Stool consistency strongly correlates with all known major microbiome markers. It is negatively correlated with species richness, positively associated to the Bacteroidetes:Firmicutes ratio, and linked to Akkermansia and Methanobrevibacterabundance. Enterotypes are distinctly distributed over the BSS-scores. Based on the correlations between microbiota growth potential and stool consistency scores within both enterotypes, we hypothesise that accelerated transit contributes to colon ecosystem differentiation. While shorter transit times can be linked to increased abundance of fast growing species in Ruminococcaceae-Bacteroides samples, hinting to a washout avoidance strategy of faster replication, this trend is absent in Prevotella-enterotyped individuals. Within this enterotype adherence to host tissue therefore appears to be a more likely bacterial strategy to cope with washout.
Conclusions The strength of the associations between stool consistency and species richness, enterotypes and community composition emphasises the crucial importance of stool consistency assessment in gut metagenome-wide association studies.
read the full open access article here:
http://gut.bmj.com/content/early/2015/06/11/gutjnl-2015-309618.long
Gut doi:10.1136/gutjnl-2015-309618
Authors Doris Vandeputte; Gwen Falony; Sara Vieira-Silva ;Raul Y Tito; Marie Joossens; Jeroen Raes
Correspondence toJeroen Raes, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, KU Leuven, Rega Institute, Herestraat 49, Leuven B-3000, Belgium; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement HEALTH-F4-2012-305312.