Metagenome-wide Association Studies Potentiate Precision Medicine for Rheumatoid Arthritis

Yigang Tong

doi:10.1016/j.gpb.2015.09.002

Abstract

An article recently published in Nature Medicine by the group led by Drs. Jun Wang and Yingrui Li from BGI-Shenzhen and Xuan Zhang from Beijing Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences revealed the relationship between the human microbiome and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) [1]. Zhang et al. performed metagenomic shotgun sequencing and a metagenome-wide association study (MGWAS) on fecal, dental, and salivary samples from a large cohort of treatment-naive RA individuals and healthy controls. As a result, they found that the gut microbiome and the oral microbiome exhibited significant differences between RA patients and normal subjects. More importantly, the altered gut microbiome and oral microbiome of RA patients were partially corrected by disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs). Therefore, their findings suggest that the gut and oral microbiome composition of RA patients could be potentially used to stratify RA patients and facilitate disease diagnosis and prognosis.

Highlights

Predisposition alone cannot fully explain rheumatoid arthritis (RA)’s etiology, and environmental factors are believed to play an important role as well [3,5]
Tong Y / metagenome-wide association study (MGWAS) Revealed Rheumatoid Arthritis Biomarkers alterations in redox environment, transport and metabolism of iron, sulfur, and zinc in the microbiota of RA patients, indicating that the altered microbiome could play an important role in the pathogenesis of RA
The involvement of microbiomes in the pathophysiology of RA and other autoimmune diseases has been reported by many previous studies, this is the first study to compare the microbiomes from three different body sites: gut, dental plaques and saliva, of RA patients and healthy controls

Summary

Introduction

Predisposition alone cannot fully explain RA’s etiology, and environmental factors are believed to play an important role as well [3,5]. Thanks to the rapid development of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology, especially metagenomics, the important role of microbiome has been more and more appreciated. To understand the potential influence of microbiome on the pathogenesis of RA and explore metagenomic markers for RA diagnosis and prognosis, Zhang et al [1] collected 212 fecal, 105 dental, and 98 saliva samples from RA patients and controls (including healthy relatives and unrelated individuals), and used shotgun sequencing technique for characterizing the microbiome in these samples.

Results

Conclusion