Gut microbiome in pSS
Emerging evidence highlights the critical role of the gut microbiome in autoimmune diseases, including primary Sjögren's syndrome (pSS). Our objective is to advance toward a holistic understanding of the gut ecosystem and its functional and metabolic capacity in such patients, which is still lacking. Utilizing whole-metagenome shotgun sequencing, we performed a multi-faceted characterization of the gut multi-kingdom microbiome (i.e., bacteriome, mycobiome, and virome), microbial functions, and predicted serum and fecal metabolomes of fecal samples from 206 pSS patients and 355 non-pSS controls. We observed significant alterations in both the diversity and composition of the gut microbiome at the multi-kingdom level in pSS patients. Our findings underscore the gut microbiome's role in pSS pathogenesis, revealing a wealth of multi-faceted microbial biomarkers and potential therapeutic targets. A deeper understanding of these alterations may facilitate the development of improved diagnostic and treatment strategies for pSS.