Breast cancer but not the menopausal status is associated with small changes of the gut microbiota
Possible relationships between gut dysbiosis and breast cancer (BC) development and progression have been previously reported. However, the results of these metagenomics studies are inconsistent. In this study, we performed shotgun metagenomic analyses to compare the gut microbial community between pre- and postmenopausal BC patients and the corresponding controls.Fecal samples were collected from 48 and 41 pre- and postmenopausal newly diagnosed BC patients, respectively, and from 51 and 35 pre- and postmenopausal controls, respectively. A total of 12, 64, 158, and 455 phyla, families, genera, and species were identified, respectively. Insignificant differences of the Shannon index and beta-diversity were found at the genus and species levels between pre- and postmenopausal controls; the differences concerned only the Chao index at the species level. No differences in alpha-diversity indexes were found between pre- and postmenopausal BC patients, although beta-diversity differed these subgroups at the genus and species levels. Consistently, only the abundance of single taxa differed between pre- and postmenopausal controls and cases, while the abundances of 14 and 23 taxa differed or tended to differ between premenopausal cases and controls, and between postmenopausal cases and controls, respectively. There were similar differences in the distribution of enterotypes. Of 460 bacterial MetaCyc pathways discovered, no pathways differentiated pre- and postmenopausal controls or BC patients, while two and one pathways differentiated cases from controls in the pre- and postmenopausal subgroups, respectively.In conclusion, while our findings did not reveal an association of changes in the overall microbiota composition and selected taxa with the menopausal status in cases and controls, they confirmed differences of the gut microbiota between pre- and postmenopausal BC patients and the corresponding controls. However, these differences were less extensive than those described previously.