Abundance alteration of nondominant species in fecal-associated microbiome of patients with SAPHO syndrome

BACKGROUND: SAPHO syndrome is a group of symptoms consisting of synovitis, acne, pustulosis, hyperostosis and osteosis. There is no specific laboratory index assist in the diagnosis of SAPHO because of its highly heterogeneous clinical manifestations. Pathogenic microorganisms had been identified in biopsies of some SAPHO cases and particular gene mutations were also linked to the occurrence of SAPHO. It is largely unknown whether intestinal microbiome plays a role in pathogenesis of SAPHO. To explore the intestinal microbiome structure of SAPHO syndrome, fecal samples from 17 SAPHO patients and 14 healthy controls (HC) were collected for 16S rDNA sequencing. RESULTS: Our results showed that there was no significant difference in alpha indexes and beta diversity between SAPHO and HC samples, while there were 14 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) in the Wilcoxon rank-sum test and 42 OTUs in the MetagenomeSeq analysis showed significant difference in distribution between the SAPHO and HC groups, 3 of which in Firmicutes were also observed in the random forest analysis and used to construct a receiver operating characteristic curve to evaluate the diagnostic value, the area under the curve was 0.86. CONCLUSION: Fecal-associated microbiome in the SAPHO samples was characterized by the alteration in abundance of some nondominant species, and the 3 selected OTUs in Firmicutes could serve as candidate biomarkers for SAPHO syndrome diagnosis. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12866-021-02221-2.