Disentangling the age-related manner in the associations between gut microbiome and women’s health: a multi-cohort microbiome study

Abstract

ABSTRACT Women’s health encompasses life-course healthcare, and mounting evidence emphasizes the pivotal contribution of gut microbiota. Therefore, understanding the temporal dynamics of gut microbiota and how age influences disease-gut microbiota associations is essential for improving women’s health. By analyzing metagenomic data from 3625 healthy women, we revealed significant effects of age on gut microbiota and age-dependent patterns in microbial features, such as relative abundance, Shannon index, and microbial network properties. Additionally, declining trends in the predictive accuracy of gut microbiota for age groups were shown using iterative sub-sampling based random forest (ISSRF) model. Age-specific species markers were also identified, many of which were shared across age groups. To investigate the influence of age on disease-gut microbiota associations, metagenomic data from 681 women with various disease conditions and 491 matched healthy controls were collected. A substantial proportion of species markers for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), type 2 diabetes (T2D), atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ACVD), and impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) differed in relative abundance across age groups, and were also age-specific species markers. Besides, the microbiota-based probabilities of IBD and ACVD were positively correlated with age. Furthermore, the age specificity of disease-gut microbiota associations was explored using the ISSRF model. Associations between IBD and gut microbiota were age-specific, with reduced stability of disease species markers in childhood and adolescence, possibly due to decrease in the effect size between patients and controls. Our findings provided valuable insights into promoting healthy aging and developing personalized healthcare strategies for women.