Simultaneous fecal microbial and metabolite profiling enables accurate classification of pediatric irritable bowel syndrome

BACKGROUND: We previously showed that stool samples of pre-adolescent and adolescent US children diagnosed with diarrhea-predominant IBS (IBS-D) had different compositions of microbiota and metabolites compared to healthy age-matched controls. Here we explored whether observed fecal microbiota and metabolite differences between these two adolescent populations can be used to discriminate between IBS and health. FINDINGS: We constructed individual microbiota- and metabolite-based sample classification models based on the partial least squares multivariate analysis and then applied a Bayesian approach to integrate individual models into a single classifier. The resulting combined classification achieved 84 % accuracy of correct sample group assignment and 86 % prediction for IBS-D in cross-validation tests. The performance of the cumulative classification model was further validated by the de novo analysis of stool samples from a small independent IBS-D cohort. CONCLUSION: High-throughput microbial and metabolite profiling of subject stool samples can be used to facilitate IBS diagnosis. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40168-015-0139-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.