Diversity Analysis of Intestinal Microbiota in Psoriasis Patients: A Single-center Prospective Study

Objective  The aim of this study was to investigate the difference in the diversity of intestinalmicrobiota of psoriasis patients compared with that of healthy people. Methods  Fresh fecal samples and clinical data of hospitalized psoriasis patients from May 2017 to June 2018 in the Institute of Dermatology of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College were prospectively collected. Healthy people undergoing physical examination during the same period were selected as the healthy control. After DNA extraction of intestinal microbiota and the gene amplification of 16S rDNA, the paired-end 2×300 strategy was used to sequence by Illumina platform. According to Gold database and the similarity-clustering operational taxonomic unit (OUT) > 97%, intestinal microbiota was annotated and classified by Silva database. The species difference of samples at all levels was analyzed using Rank sum test. The main index of α diversity and the analysis of β diversity were calculated using QIIME software. All indexes were analyzed by Welch's t test and P Results  Totally 11 psoriasis patients and 21 healthy controls were eligible for this study. Between the psoriasis group and the healthy group, the ratios of gender, age, and body mass index showed no statistical significance (all P > 0.05). The DNA sequencing showed that coverage index of samples' sequencing was > 0.99. The OTU numbers (278.18±89.75 vs. 722.95±152.81, t=10.36, P Conclusion  Diversity of intestinal microbiota in psoriasis patients is lower than that of healthy people.