Abstract
Human intestinal microbiota is affected by the exogenous
microenvironment. This study aimed to determine the effects
of cigarettes and alcohol on the gut microbiota of healthy
men. In total, 116 healthy male subjects were enrolled and
divided into four groups: non-smoking and non-drinking
(Group A), smoking only (Group B), drinking only (Group
C), and smoking and drinking combined (Group D). Fecal
samples were collected and sequenced using 16S rRNA to
analyze the microbial composition. Short-chain fatty acid
(SCFAs) levels in feces were determined by gas chromatography.
We found that cigarette and alcohol consumptions
can alter overall composition of gut microbiota in healthy
men. The relative abundances of phylum Bacteroidetes and
Firmicutes and more than 40 genera were changed with cigarette
and alcohol consumptions. SCFAs decreased with smoking
and alcohol consumption. Multivariate analysis indicated
that when compared with group A, group B/C/D had higher
Bacteroides, and lower Phascolarctobacterium, Ruminococcaceae_
UCG-002, Ruminococcaceae_UCG-003, and Ruminiclostridium_
9 regardless of BMI and age. Additionally, the
abundance of Bacteroides was positively correlated with the
smoking pack-year (r = 0.207, p < 0.05), the abundance of predicted
pathway of bacterial toxins (r = 0.3672, p < 0.001) and
the level of carcinoembryonic antigen in host (r = 0.318, p
< 0.01). Group D shared similar microbial construction with
group B, but exerted differences far from group C with lower
abundance of Haemophilus. These results demonstrated that
cigarette and alcohol consumption separately affected the
intestinal microbiota and function in healthy men; furthermore,
the co-occurrence of cigarette and alcohol didn’t exacerbate
the dysbiosis and cigarette played the predominated
role on the alteration.
Citations
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