Investigation of gut microbiome in hidradenitis suppurativa

Hidradenitis suppurativa is a chronic inflammatory disease of the skin. The pathogenesis has not been elucidated yet and there are difficulties in the treatment. Hidradenitis suppurativa, psoriasis and inflammatory bowel diseases are chronic inflammatory diseases and share common features in the manner of having genetic predisposition; Th1, Th17, and Treg inflammatory cytokine responses, such as TNF-α, INF-γ, IL-12, IL-17 and IL-23, and responding to similar treatments. Based on the hypothesis that dysbiogenesis in the gut microbiome may be a trigger for systemic inflammation in the pathogenesis of these diseases, fecal samples of 15 hidradenitis suppurativa patients and 15 healthy controls were analyzed using next generation sequencing (NGS) method. Shannon diversity index was significantly different between hidradenitis suppurativa and control subjects indicating that the alpha diversity in hidradenitis suppurativa is lower than that in healthy individuals (p=0,048). Bray-Curtis Dissimilarity and Jaccard Distance were used to analyze beta diversity and the results revealed a significant separation in the bacterial community composition between hidradenitis suppurativa patients and healthy individuals (p=0,01 and p=0,007, respectively). Distribution of taxa at the genus level showed that Clostridiales_unclassified, Fusicatenibacter and Firmicutes_unclassified were significantly less abundant in hidradenitis suppurativa patients (p=0,005, p=0,046 and p=0,029, respectively). The results support the hypothesis that dysbiosis in gut microbiome may play a role in the pathogenesis of hidradenitis suppurativa. This is the first study to analyse gut microbiome in hidradenitis suppurativa patients by using Next-generation sequencing (NGS). Key words :Hidradenitis suppurativa, gut microbiome