Gut microbiome biomarkers in adolescent obesity: a regional study

Purpose This study aimed to characterize the gut microbiota in obese adolescents from Shenzhen (China), and evaluate influence of gender on BMI-related differences in the gut microbiome. Methods Evaluation of physical examination, blood pressure measurement, serological assay and body composition were conducted in 205 adolescent subjects at Shenzhen. Fecal microbiome composition was profiled via high-throughput sequencing of the V3–V4 regions of the 16S rRNA gene. A Random Forest (RF) classifier model was built to distinguish the BMI categories based on the gut bacterial composition. Results Fifty-six taxa consisting mainly of Firmicutes were identified that having significant associations with BMI; 2 OTUs belonging to Ruminococcaceae and 1 belonging to Lachnospiraceae had relatively strong positive correlations with body fate rate, waistline and most of serum biochemical properties. Based on the 56 BMI-associated OTUs, the RF model showed a robust classification accuracy (AUC 0.96) for predicting the obese phenotype. Gender-specific differences in the gut microbiome composition was obtained, and a lower relative abundance of Odoribacter genus was particularly found in obese boys. Functional analysis revealed a deficiency in bacterial gene contents related to peroxisome and PPAR signaling pathway in the obese subjects for both genders. Conclusions This study reveals unique features of gut microbiome in terms of microbial composition and metabolic functions in obese adolescents, and provides a baseline for reference and comparison studies.