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Abstract Objective The study aimed to explore the association between gut microbiota and anastomotic leakage (AL) after surgery in colorectal cancer (CRC) patients from a frigid zone, based on high-throughput sequencing. Methods A total of 98 CRC patients admitted to the Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University from July 2018 to February 2019, who met the inclusion criteria, were included. Among these, 10 patients were diagnosed as AL. After propensity-score matching of baseline characteristics, 10 patients from the anastomotic leakage group (AG) and 10 patients from the normal group (NG) were finally included in this study. Fecal samples were collected, and total DNA was extracted for high-throughput sequencing and bioinformatic analysis. Results Alpha diversity analysis showed no significant difference between the two groups, while beta diversity analysis revealed significant differences in principal components. Differential microbiota were classified as Proteobacteria at the phylum level ( P = 0.021). At the genus level, the abundances of Streptococcus ( P = 0.045), Citrobacter ( P = 0.008) and Klebsiella ( P = 0.002) were significantly different between the two groups. LEfSe analysis indicated that these genera contributed most to the differences between the groups. Conclusion The characteristics of the gut microbiota in the AG and NG were significantly different, and these differences might be associated with AL in CRC patients from frigid zones.
Wang et al. (Sat,) studied this question.