Ranking the impact of human health disorders on gut metabolism: Systemic lupus erythematosus and obesity as study cases

Multiple factors have been shown to alter intestinal microbial diversity. It remains to be seen, however, how multiple collective pressures impact the activity in the gut environment and which, if any, is positioned as a dominant driving factor determining the final metabolic outcomes. Here, we describe the results of a metabolome-wide scan of gut microbiota in 18 subjects with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and 17 healthy control subjects and demonstrate a statistically significant difference (p < 0.05) between the two groups. Healthy controls could be categorized (p < 0.05) based on their body mass index (BMI), whereas individuals with SLE could not. We discuss the prevalence of SLE compared with BMI as the dominant factor that regulates gastrointestinal microbial metabolism and provide plausible explanatory causes. Our results uncover novel perspectives with clinical relevance for human biology. In particular, we rank the importance of various pathophysiologies for gut homeostasis.The present investigation was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the ERA NET PathoGenoMics2 program, grant number 0315441A. This work was further funded by grants BFU2008-04501-E, BFU2008-04398-E, SAF2009-13032-C02-01, SAF2012-31187 and CSD2007-00005, BIO2011-25012, AGL2010-14952 and AGL2006-11697/ALI from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, and Prometeo/2009/092 from Generalitat Valenciana (Spain). The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)