Retinal artery occlusion is associated with compositional and functional shifts in the gut microbiome and altered trimethylamine-N-oxide levels.

Zysset-Burri, Denise C.; Keller, Irene; Berger, Lieselotte E.; Neyer, Peter J; Steuer, Christian; Wolf, Sebastian; Zinkernagel, Martin S. (2019). Retinal artery occlusion is associated with compositional and functional shifts in the gut microbiome and altered trimethylamine-N-oxide levels. Scientific reports, 9(1), p. 15303. Springer Nature 10.1038/s41598-019-51698-5

Preview

Text s41598-019-51698-5.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution (CC-BY). Download (3MB) | Preview

Retinal artery occlusion (RAO) is a sight threatening complication of cardiovascular disease and commonly occurs due to underlying atherosclerosis. As cardiovascular disease and atherosclerosis in particular has been associated with compositional alterations in the gut microbiome, we investigated this association in patients with clinically confirmed non-arteritic RAO compared to age- and sex-matched controls. On the phylum level, the relative abundance of Bacteroidetes was decreased in patients with RAO compared to controls, whereas the opposite applied for the phylum of Proteobacteria. Several genera and species such as Actinobacter, Bifidobacterium spp., Bacteroides stercoris, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii were relatively enriched in patients with RAO, whereas others such as Odoribacter, Parasutterella or Lachnospiraceae were significantly lower. Patient's gut microbiomes were enriched in genes of the cholesterol metabolism pathway. The gut derived, pro-atherogenic metabolite trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO) was significantly higher in patients with RAO compared to controls (p = 0.023) and a negative correlation between relative abundances of genera Parasutterella and Lachnospiraceae and TMAO levels and a positive correlation between relative abundance of genus Akkermansia and TMAO levels was found in study subjects. Our findings proposes that RAO is associated with alterations in the gut microbiome and with elevated TMAO levels, suggesting that RAO could be targeted by microbiome-altering interventions.

Interest & Impact

Downloads

326 since deposited on 09 Dec 2019
25 in the past 12 months

Citations

5 Citations in Web of Science ®
6 Citations in Scopus

Search

in Google Scholar™

Services

Actions (login required)

Edit item

Actions (login required)

Edit item