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The abundance of fecal Faecalibacterium prausnitzii in relation to obesity and gender in Chinese adults

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Abstract

The influence of gender and obesity on the abundance of human colonic Feacalibacterium prausnitzii is currently unclear. We collected fecal samples from 54 obese and 54 sex- and age-matched normal-weight Chinese adults and quantified the fecal F. prausnitzii as percentage of 16S rRNA gene copies of F. prausnitzii accounting to that of total gut bacteria with quantitative PCR. The fecal F. prausnitzii amount was not significantly different between obese and lean subjects. Men possessed significantly lower level of fecal F. prausnitzii than women, and the significant and positive correlation of fecal F. prausnitzii quantity with fasting glucose level was observed in men, not in women. Our results suggest that the gender effect, in addition to other factors including the geographic location, ethnicity, diet and gut transit times of study subjects, has to be considered when studying the relationship between gut F. prausnitzii and diseases.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a Grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81100632).

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Author notes

  1. Min Li

    Present address: Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 363 Bevier Hall, M/C 182, 905 South Goodwin Ave., Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Systems Biomedicine (Ministry of Education), Shanghai Center for Systems Biomedicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Jie Feng, Huang Tang, Yufeng Zhao & Jian Shen

  2. State Key Laboratory of Microbial Metabolism, School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Jie Feng, Huang Tang, Min Li, Xiaoyan Pang, Linghua Wang, Menghui Zhang & Xiaojun Zhang

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  1. Jie Feng
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Correspondence to Jian Shen.

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Jie Feng and Huang Tang have contributed equally to this work.

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Feng, J., Tang, H., Li, M. et al. The abundance of fecal Faecalibacterium prausnitzii in relation to obesity and gender in Chinese adults. Arch Microbiol 196, 73–77 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-013-0942-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-013-0942-2

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