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Intestinal Microbiota Was Assessed in Cirrhotic Patients with Hepatitis B Virus Infection

Intestinal Microbiota of HBV Cirrhotic Patients

  • Host Microbe Interaction
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Abstract

To unravel the profile of intestinal microecological parameters in Chinese patients with asymptomatic carriage of hepatitis B virus (HBV), chronic hepatitis B, decompensated HBV cirrhosis, and health controls and to establish their correlation with liver disease progression, we performed quantitative PCR and immunological techniques to investigate fecal parameters, including population of fecal predominant bacteria and the abundance of some virulence genes derived from Escherichia coli, Bacteroides fragilis, Clostridium difficile, and Clostridium perfringens in fecal crude DNA and some immunological parameters in extracts of all fecal samples. Data analysis indicated that 16S rRNA gene copy numbers for Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, Enterococcus faecalis, Enterobacteriaceae, bifidobacteria, and lactic acid bacteria (Lactobacillus, Pediococcus, Leuconostoc, and Weissella) showed marked variation in the intestine of HBV cirrhotic patients. The Bifidobacteria/Enterobacteriaceae (B/E) ratio, which may indicate microbial colonization resistance of the bowel, was decreased significantly in turn from 1.15 ± 0.11 in healthy controls, 0.99 ± 0.09 in asymptomatic carriers, and 0.76 ± 0.08 in patients with chronic hepatitis B to 0.64 ± 0.09 in patients with decompensated HBV cirrhosis (for all, P < 0.01). This suggests that B/E ratio is useful for following the level of intestinal microecological disorder in the course of liver disease progression. The data for virulence gene abundance suggested increased diversity of virulence factors during liver disease progression. Fecal secretory IgA and tumor necrosis factor-α in decompensated HBV cirrhotic patients were present at higher levels than in other groups, which indicates that a complicated autoregulatory system tries to achieve a new intestinal microecological balance.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the physicians at the Department of Infectious Diseases and the surgeons at the Department of Surgery in the First Affiliated Hospital, College of Medicine, Zhejiang University, for their collaboration and collection of stool specimens. This study was supported by the National Basic Research Program (973) of China (2007CB513003), the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Y20090363), and the Zhejiang Provincial Medical Scientific Research Foundation of China (Y200921311).

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  1. State Key Laboratory for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, the First Affiliated Hospital, College of Medicine, Zhejiang University, 79 Qingchun Road, Hangzhou, 310003, People’s Republic of China

    Haifeng Lu, Zhongwen Wu, Wei Xu, Jiezuan Yang, Yunbo Chen & Lanjuan Li

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  1. Haifeng Lu
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Correspondence to Lanjuan Li.

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Lu, H., Wu, Z., Xu, W. et al. Intestinal Microbiota Was Assessed in Cirrhotic Patients with Hepatitis B Virus Infection. Microb Ecol 61, 693–703 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-010-9801-8

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