Intestinal dysbiosis associated with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Comunicación presentada en la 2014 ENGIHR Conference: The Gut Microbiota Throughout Life, celebrada en Karlsruhe, Alemania, del 24 al 26 de septiembre de 2014Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) is the prototypical systemic autoimmune disease in humans, characterized by the presence of hyperactive immune cells and aberrant antibody responses to nuclear and cytoplasmic antigens, including characteristic anti-dsDNA antibodies(1). Although growing evidence suggests that the gut microbiota might impact disease symptoms and progression (2), how and why this microbial community influences SLE physiology remains to be elucidated. We performed a cross-sectional study in order to know if an SLE-associated gut dysbiosis exists in patients without active disease. A representative group of 20 SLE patients, considering strict inclusion and exclusion criteria, was recruited and we used an optimized Ion Torrent 16S rRNA gene-based analysis protocol to decipher the fecal microbial profile of these patients (3), and compare it with that of age and sex-matched 20 healthy control subjects. We found diversity to be comparable using Shannon's index. However, we saw a significantly lower Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratio in SLE individuals (median 1.97) than in healthy subjects (median 4.86) (p