Molecular Analysis Of Intestinal Flora From Patients With Liver Cirrhosis

Objective: Human liver was closely associated with gut through variousbiological mechanisms, such as bacterium-gut interactions. Alterations of gutmicrobiota seemed to play an important role in induction and promotion of liver damageprogression. The aim of this study was to characterize the gut microbiota in livercirrhosis patients and assess whether there are alterations in the diversity and similarityof intestinal flora in cirrhotic patients when compared with healthy individuals, and toestablish the relationship between liver cirrhosis and gut microbiota.Methods: PCR-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (PCR-DGGE) withuniversal primers targeting V3region of the16S rRNA gene was employed tocharacterize the overall intestinal microbiota composition in samples, and some excisedgel bands were extracted and cloned for sequencing. Real-time PCR was further utilizedto quantitatively analyze the subpopulation of microbiota using group-specific primerstargeting the Enterobacteriaceae，Enterococcus and Bifidobacterium genus.Results: The DGGE profiles of two groups demonstrated significant differencesbetween cirrhotic and healthy groups (p<0.05).While real-time PCR revealed significantincrease of Enterobacteriaceae and Enterococcus(p<0.05)in the cirrhotic groupcompared with the healthy group. The ratio of Bifidobacterium genus and Enterobacteriaceae decreased in the cirrhotic patients group, but no statistical significance.Conclusion: In this work, we observed the alteration of gut microbiota in thecirrhotic group compared with the healthy individuals, which suggested that there was astrong relationship between alterations of gut microbiota and liver cirrhosis.