After dedicating nearly 3 years of hard work, the research team recently published a significant research finding in the renowned international journal "𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘔𝘪𝘤𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘪𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺". The team developed a panel of 31 multikingdom and functional markers that showed high diagnostic performance for ASD and has great potential as a clinical diagnostic tool.
Dr. Oscar Wong, Team Leader of HATCH Clinical Research Team, and Dr. Su Qi, Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics at CU Medicine, are the co-author of the research paper. They conceived the study, ran analyses and drafted the paper. Our HATCH's research fellow, Monica Wan, also contributed to part of metagenomic sequencing.
Multikingdom and functional gut microbiota markers for autism spectrum disorder
Qi Su, Oscar W. H. Wong, Wenqi Lu, Yating Wan, Lin Zhang, Wenye Xu, Moses K. T. Li, Chengyu Liu, Chun Pan Cheung, Jessica Y. L. Ching, Pui Kuan Cheong, Ting Fan Leung, Sandra Chan, Patrick Leung, Francis K. L. Chan & Siew C. Ng
Nature Microbiology (2024)
Abstract
Associations between the gut microbiome and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been investigated although most studies have focused on the bacterial component of the microbiome. Whether gut archaea, fungi and viruses, or function of the gut microbiome, is altered in ASD is unclear. Here we performed metagenomic sequencing on faecal samples from 1,627 children (aged 1–13 years, 24.4% female) with or without ASD, with extensive phenotype data. Integrated analyses revealed that 14 archaea, 51 bacteria, 7 fungi, 18 viruses, 27 microbial genes and 12 metabolic pathways were altered in children with ASD. Machine learning using single-kingdom panels showed area under the curve (AUC) of 0.68 to 0.87 in differentiating children with ASD from those that are neurotypical. A panel of 31 multikingdom and functional markers showed a superior diagnostic accuracy with an AUC of 0.91, with comparable performance for males and females. Accuracy of the model was predominantly driven by the biosynthesis pathways of ubiquinol-7 or thiamine diphosphate, which were less abundant in children with ASD. Collectively, our findings highlight the potential application of multikingdom and functional gut microbiota markers as non-invasive diagnostic tools in ASD.
Reference
Su, Q., Wong, O. W., Lu, W., Wan, Y., Zhang, L., Xu, W., ... & Ng, S. C. (2024). Multikingdom and functional gut microbiota markers for autism spectrum disorder. Nature Microbiology, 1-12.
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