Endocrine Abstracts

JOINT3297

Objective: Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is one of the most common causes of chronic liver disease in children worldwide. The gut microbiota plays a critical role in human metabolism, and has been appointed as driver of meta-inflammation observed in lipid metabolism and NAFLD, which has not been fully studied in children with obesity.

Methods: Clinical data were collected between June, 2019 and December, 2019 at the Fuzhou Children’s Hospital of Fujian Medical University, in China. Data of 89 participants aged between 5 and 15 were examined. Subjects with any endocrine disorder, history of antibiotic therapy, hospitalization (>24 h) in the past 6 months prior to the enrollment, chronic gastrointestinal illness or use of gastro-intestinal-related medication, or diarrheal disease (World Health Organization definition) in the past one month were excluded. Participants with body fat (BF)% ≥ 30% were diagnosed as obesity. Serum adropin and leptin levels were measured by ELISA, and the composition of gut microbiota was investigated by 16S rRNA-based metagenomics.

Results: The mean age of the 89 participants were 9.75 ±1.92 years old. Based on BF%, the study population were divided as normal weight (n = 29), obesity without NAFLD (n = 39) and obesity with NAFLD (n = 21) groups. Alpha-diversity such as Shannon index, Observed index and ACE were significantly lower in NAFLD group compared with the Obesity and the Con groups (P <0.05). PCoA analysis revealed that gut microbiota of the NAFLD group were clustered together and separated partly from the Obesity and the Con groups (P <0.05). Compared to the Obesity and the Con groups, subjects with NAFLD had significantly lower prevalent members of phylum Bacteroidetes, genus Alistipes, Anaerotruncus, Bacteroides, Holdemania, Lactonifactor, Oscillospira, Sutterella, and more members of genus Aggregatibacter, Catenibacterium, Morganella, Paraprevotella (all P <0.05). Spearman’s correlation analysis revealed that leptin negatively correlated with phylum Bacteroidetes, genus Alistipes, Bacteroides, Holdemania and Lactonifactor. Adropin positively correlated with phylum Bacteroidetes, genus Alistipes, Anaerotruncus, Bacteroides, Lactonifactor, Oscillospira.

Conclusions: The composition of the gut microbiota in children with NAFLD differs from Con. Alterations in the microbiota that produce short-chain fatty acids may contribute to the development of NAFLD by affecting levels of cytokine.

Keywords: gut microbiota, lipid metabolism, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, cytokine