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. 2018 Dec 3:14:3329-3337.
doi: 10.2147/NDT.S188340. eCollection 2018.

Possible association of Firmicutes in the gut microbiota of patients with major depressive disorder

Yichen Huang  1 , Xing Shi  2 , Zhiyong Li  1 , Yang Shen  1 , Xinxin Shi  1 , Liying Wang  3 , Gaofei Li  3 , Ye Yuan  2 , Jixiang Wang  4 , Yongchao Zhang  4 , Lei Zhao  4 , Meng Zhang  4 , Yu Kang  2 , Ying Liang  1
Affiliations

Possible association of Firmicutes in the gut microbiota of patients with major depressive disorder

Yichen Huang et al. Neuropsychiatr Dis Treat. .

Abstract

Background: Gut microbiota can affect human behavior and mood in many ways. Several studies have shown that patients with depression were also accompanied with gut microbiota disorder, in which Firmicutes are related to the protective function of intestinal barrier. In this study, we explore the changes and effects of Firmicutes in the patients with major depressive disorder (MDD).

Method: We recruited 54 subjects, including 27 patients with MDD. Fecal samples were collected for identification by 16S rRNA sequencing and bioinformatics analysis.

Results: The study shows that the alpha diversity indices of MDD patients are lower than those of the healthy controls. Firmicutes is the most significantly decreased phylum in the MDD samples. There are totally 13 taxonomic biomarkers with P-value <0.01 from Firmicutes. There are differences in 17 KEGG pathways between the two groups.

Conclusion: This study found that there is a significant disorder of gut microbiota in the patients with depression, in which the Firmicutes decreased significantly. Defects of the Firmicutes may lead to the depression in short-chain fatty acids, which could account for the physiological basis of low-level inflammation of depression.

Limitations: This is a cross-sectional study and the sample size is comparatively small. Though several diet-related factors were controlled in the study, there is no quantified assessment of it.

Keywords: Firmicutes; brain–gut axis; depression; gut microbiota; short-chain fatty acids.

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Conflict of interest statement

Disclosure The authors declare no conflicts of interest in this work.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Alpha diversity of HC and MDD samples. Notes: (A–D) The ACE, Chao1, Shannon, and Faith’s phylogenetic diversity of HC and MDD calculated using rarefied OTU matrix. All four diversity indices in HC are significantly higher than MDD. *P<0.05, **P<0.01, ***P<0.001. Abbreviations: HC, healthly control; MDD, major depressive disorder; OTU, operational taxonomic unit.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Beta diversity of HC and MDD. Notes: (A and B) PCoA plot of unweighted Unifrac and weighted Unifrac distance of HC and MDD samples using rarefied OTU matrix. Green dots represent HC samples and red dots represent MDD samples. Abbreviations: HC, healthly control; MDD, major depressive disorder; OTU, operational taxonomic unit; PCoA, principal coordinates analysis.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Taxa in phylum level of HC and MDD. Notes: (A) The chart plot of taxa in HC and MDD samples. (B) The statistical test of Firmicutes relative abundance between HC and MDD samples. ***P<0.001. Abbreviations: HC, healthly control; MDD, major depressive disorder.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Taxonomic biomarkers in HC and MDD. Notes: (A) Taxonomic biomarkers found by LEfSe in HC (green) and MDD (red). All taxa enriched in HC are from Firmicutes. (B) Cladogram plot of biomarkers. The size of node represents the abundance of taxa. Only taxa with P-value <0.01 and LDA score (log 10) >2 are shown. Abbreviations: HC, healthly control; LEfSe, LDA effect size; MDD, major depressive disorder.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Predicted differential KEGG pathways in HC and MDD. Notes: The extended error bar plot of significantly differential KEGG pathways predicted using PICRUSt. Only P-value <0.01 are shown. Abbreviations: HC, healthly control; MDD, major depressive disorder.
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