Effects of Lycium barbarum Polysaccharides on Immunity and the Gut Microbiota in Cyclophosphamide-Induced Immunosuppressed Mice.

Ying Wang,Shuang Yang,Yue Liu,Shuai Kang,Jian Ni,Hongyu Jin,Shuangcheng Ma,Jianbo Yang,Mingyi Sun

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2021.701566

Abstract

The mechanism of immunoregulation by Lycium barbarum polysaccharides (LBPs) was assessed by studying the effect of LBP on the immunity and the gut microbiota. LBP isolated and purified in this study was composed of nine monosaccharides, with an Mw 1,207 kDa. LBP showed immunomodulatory activity in cyclophosphamide (Cy)-treated mice by restoring the damaged immune organs and adjusting the T lymphocyte subsets. We also found that LBP increased the diversity of the gut microbiota and the relative abundances of bacteria, such as Rickenellaceae, Prevotellaceae, Bifidobacteriaceae, and so on, which were positively associated with immune traits. In addition, Caco2 cells model was used to explore the intestinal absorption of LBP. Results showed that LBP was hardly absorbed in the intestine, which suggesting that most LBP may interact with gut microbiota. These findings suggest that the immune response induced by LBP is associated with the regulation of the gut microbiota.

Highlights

The human gut microbiome encompasses >100 trillion microorganisms (Frank and Pace, 2008)
Neutral sugar and uronic acid contents were assessed and the results showed that Lycium barbarum polysaccharides (LBPs) contained carbohydrates and uronic acids at 73.2 ± 3.7 and 18.5 ± 2.5%, respectively
The results indicated that LBP was composed of Man, Rib, Rha, glucuronic acid (GlcA), galacturonic acid (GalA), Glc, Gal, Xyl, and Ara

Summary

Introduction

The human gut microbiome encompasses >100 trillion microorganisms (Frank and Pace, 2008). About 1013–1014 microbial organisms are found in the gut of a healthy adult, far exceeding the total amounts of human cells (Muñoz-Garach et al, 2006). Gut microbiota disruption is increasingly described in multiple pathologies. Plant polysaccharides, which are usually indigestible components for the host, exert regulatory effects on the gut microbiota (Wang et al, 2019a). Mounting evidence suggest that plant polysaccharides have obvious regulatory effects on the intestinal flora. The polysaccharides of Dendrobium Sonia (Liu et al, 2019), Hericium erinaceus (Shao et al, 2019), and Auricularia auricula (Kong et al, 2020) are beneficial for gut microbiota composition

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Discussion

Conclusion