Gastric dysbiosis, characterized by shifts in the microbial composition, has been increasingly associated with the development of gastric cancer, the fifth leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide and the second in Chile, yet its characterization through disease stages remains limited and its study in Latin American populations almost non-existent. While Helicobacter pylori is a well-established risk factor, recent evidence supports the involvement of non- Helicobacter pylori bacteria associated with disease progression, emphasizing the need to characterize the gastric microbiome in diverse populations and through cancer stages. In this study, 162 endoscopic biopsy tissues and gastrectomy tissues from 83 Chilean individuals enrolled in the Magellanic gastric cohort MAGIC and the BTUCH cohort were analyzed using high throughput full-length 16S rRNA sequencing based on Nanopore technology. Diversity analysis demonstrated significant differences among disease progression and histological subtypes. Spearman correlation identified 34 genera significantly associated with gastric cancer progression, including enrichment of Lactobacillus and Limosilactobacillus . Helicobacter stratification analysis revealed lower diversity and distinct community structure at early stages of disease. Declining Helicobacter abundance was associated with shifts toward degradation and biosynthetic/energy metabolism pathways suggesting potential metabolic adaptation in carcinogenesis. These findings reveal stage-specific restructuring of the gastric microbiota along disease progression and identify non- Helicobacter taxa as part of microbial signatures associated with different stages of gastric carcinogenesis.
Zapata‐Contreras et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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