Gut microbiota composition in patients with Crohn’s disease in Saudi Arabia

by Hadil Alahdal, Ghaida Almuneef, Manal Muhammed Alkhulaifi, Omar Aldibasi, Abdulrahman Aljouie, Othman Alharbi, Zakiah Naser Almohawes, Fatemah Basingab, Mokhtar Rejili

Crohn’s disease (CD) entails intricate interactions with gut microbiome diversity, richness, and composition. The relationship between CD and gut microbiome is not clearly understood and has not been previously characterized in Saudi Arabia. We performed statistical analysis about various factors influencing CD activity and microbiota dysbiosis, including diagnosis, treatment, and its impact on their quality of life as well as high-throughput metagenomic V3-V4 16S rRNA encoding gene hypervariable region of a total of eighty patients with CD, both in its active and inactive state with healthy controls. The results were correlated with the demographic and lifestyle information, which the participants provided via a questionnaire. α-diversity measures indicated lower bacterial diversity and richness in the active and inactive CD groups compared to the control group. Greater dysbiosis was observed in the active CD patients compared to the inactive form of the disease, showed by a reduction in microbial diversity. Specific pathogenic bacteria such as Filifactor, Peptoniphilus, and Sellimonas were identified as characteristic of CD groups. In contrast, anti-inflammatory bacteria like Defluviitalea, Papillibacter, and Petroclostridium were associated with the control group. Among the various factors influencing disease activity and microbiota dysbiosis, smoking emerged as the most significant, with reduced α-diversity and richness for the smokers in all groups, and proinflammatory Fusobacteria was more present (p<0.05). Opposite to the control group, microbial diversity and richness were lower in CD participants of older age compared to younger ones, and male CD participants showed less diversity compared to women participants from the same groups. Our results describe the first report on the relationship between microbiota and Crohn’s disease progress in Saudi Arabia, which may provide a theoretical basis for the application of therapeutic methods to regulate gut microbes in CD.