Associations between Gut Microbiota and Microbial Metabolites in Adjuvant-induced Arthritis Rats with Moist Heat Arthralgia Spasm Syndrome

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic systemic autoimmune disease. According to traditional chinese medicine (TCM) syndromes theory, moist heat arthralgia spasm syndrome is the most prevalent syndrome of RA patients in the active period. However, the mechanism of alteration of gut microbiota in RA with moist heat arthralgia spasm syndrome has not been reported until now.

This study focused on the alteration of gut microbiota in adjuvant-induced arthritis (AA) rats with moist heat arthralgia spasm syndrome, elaborated its regulation mechanism, and analyzed the associations between gut microbiota and microbial metabolites.

The disease-syndrome combination rat model of RA with moist heat arthralgia spasm syndrome was constructed with AA under damp-heat stimulating. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to measure serum biochemical indicators. Damages of ankle joints were observed using hematoxylin and eosin (H&E). 16 small ribosomal subunit RNA (16S rRNA) gene sequencing was conducted to assess the gut microbiota composition and function on feces from rats. Alterations in fecal metabolites profiling were evaluated by fecal metabolomics through liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Pearson correlation analysis was performed to explore the associations of altered gut microbiota and microbial metabolites in Model rats.

The imbalance of gut microbiota in Model rats was accompanied by metabolic disorders. Lactobacillus, Prevotellaceae_NK3B31_group, Allobaculum, Prevotellaceae_UCG_001, Alloprevotella, and Dubosiella were found to be dominant genera in Model rats. In total, 357 metabolites were significantly altered in Model rats and predominantly enriched into fatty acid degradation and glycerophospholipid metabolism. Pearson correlation analysis showed that TNF-α and IL-1β were associated with Prevotellaceae_Ga6A1_group and 3R-hydroxy-docosan-5S-olide, alpha-N-(3-hydroxy-14-methyl-pentadecanoyl)-ornithine, 17-methyl-trans-4,5-methylenenona-decanoic acid, Semiplenamide F.

The key differential microbiota genera and differential microbial metabolites may become important targets for the treatment of RA and provide the theoretical basis for exploring the pathogenesis of RA.