Fecal microbiota from MRL/Lpr mice exacerbates pristane induced lupus

Abstract Background: The roles of gut microbiota in the pathogenesis of SLE have been receiving much attention during recent years. However, it still remains unknown how fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) and microbial metabolites affect the immune responses and lupus progression. Methods: We transferred the fecal microbiota from MRL/Lpr mice and MRL/Mpj mice or PBS to the pristane-induced lupus mice and observed the disease development of the pristane-induced lupus mice. We also screened the gut microbiota and metabolite spectrums of the pristane-induced lupus mice with FMT via 16S rRNA sequencing, metagenomic sequencing and metabolomics, respectively, followed by the correlation analysis.Results: FMT from MRL/Lpr mice could promote the pathogenesis of the pristane induced lupus mice, which also affected the immune cell profiles in the intestine exclusively the plasma cells. The structures and compositions of microbial communities in gut of the FMT-Lpr mice were different from those of the FMT-Mpj mice and FMT-PBS mice. Some specific microbes such as prevotella taxa were predominantly enriched in the gut microbiome of the FMT-Lpr mice, which were positively associated with the functional pathways such as cyanoamino acid metabolism. Differential metabolites such as valine and L-isoleucine were identified with varied abundance among three groups. The abundance alteration of the prevotella taxa may affect the phenotypic changes such as the proteinuria levels in the pristane-induced lupus mice.Conclusion: These findings further confirmed that gut microbiota play an important role in the pathogenesis of lupus. The intervention of gut microbiome may provide a novel way to treat lupus.