Gut microbiota studies have been well-investigated for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, however, fewer studies have comprehensively examined the gut microbiome in Motor Neuron Disease (MND), with none examining its impact on disease prognosis. Here, we investigate MND prognosis and the fecal microbiota, using 16S rRNA case–control data from 100 individuals with extensive medical histories and metabolic measurements. We contrast the composition and diversity of fecal microbiome signatures from 49 MND and 51 healthy controls by combining current gold-standard 16S microbiome pipelines. Using stringent quality control thresholds, we conducted qualitative assessment approaches including; direct comparison of taxa, PICRUSt2 predicted metagenomics, Shannon and Chao1-index and Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratio. We show that the fecal microbiome of patients with MND is not significantly different from that of healthy controls that were matched by age, sex, and BMI, however there are distinct differences in Beta-diversity in some patients with MND. Weight, BMI, and metabolic and clinical features of disease in patients with MND were not related to the composition of their fecal microbiome, however, we observe a greater risk for earlier death in patients with MND with increased richness and diversity of the microbiome, and in those with greater Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes ratio. This was independent of anthropometric, metabolic, or clinical features of disease, and warrants support for further gut microbiota studies in MND. Given the disease heterogeneity in MND, and complexity of the gut microbiota, large studies are necessary to determine the detailed role of the gut microbiota and MND prognosis.

肠道微生物群研究已经针对阿尔茨海默氏症和帕金森氏症等神经退行性疾病进行了深入研究，但是，很少有研究全面研究运动神经元疾病 (MND) 中的肠道微生物群，没有研究其对疾病预后的影响。在这里，我们使用来自 100 名具有广泛病史和代谢测量值的个体的 16S rRNA 病例对照数据研究 MND 预后和粪便微生物群。我们通过结合当前的黄金标准 16S 微生物组管道，对比了来自 49 名 MND 和 51 名健康对照的粪便微生物组特征的组成和多样性。使用严格的质量控制阈值，我们进行了定性评估方法，包括：直接比较分类群、PICRUSt2 预测宏基因组学、香农和 Chao1 指数以及厚壁菌门/拟杆菌门比率。我们发现 MND 患者的粪便微生物组与年龄、性别和 BMI 匹配的健康对照者的粪便微生物组没有显着差异，但是一些 MND 患者的 Beta 多样性存在明显差异。MND 患者的体重、BMI 以及疾病的代谢和临床特征与其粪便微生物组的组成无关，但是，我们观察到微生物组丰富度和多样性增加的 MND 患者早期死亡的风险更大，并且在厚壁菌门与拟杆菌门的比例较大的那些中。这与疾病的人体测量学、代谢或临床特征无关，并保证了对 MND 中进一步肠道微生物群研究的支持。鉴于 MND 的疾病异质性和肠道微生物群的复杂性，