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BackgroundObesity is a common health problem among patients with schizophrenia, but the precise mechanisms are not fully understood. There has been much interest in the relationship between gut microbiome and development of obesity. Gender-dependent microbial alteration has been reported in previous studies. However, the gender factor in gut microbiome composition of schizophrenia patients has been less investigated. Our study aimed to identify differences in gut microbiota between schizophrenia patients with normal weight and central obesity and investigate the gender specific features.MethodTwenty participants (10 males, 10 females) with central obesity (CO) and 20 participants (10 males, 10 females) with normal weight (NW) were recruited from two rehabilitation wards in a psychiatric hospital in central Taiwan. Fecal samples from 40 participants were processed for microbiota analysis. The intestinal microbiota composition was analyzed using next-generation sequencing and QIIME software.ResultsSignificantly higher richness of gut microbiota at the class level (measured by the number of observed OTUs) was observed in female NW subjects than in female CO subjects (P = 0.033). Furthermore, female NW subjects showed higher alpha diversity at both phylum and class levels (measured by the Shannon, Simpson, and Inverse-Simpson indexes) compared with female CO subjects. Males showed no significant difference in alpha diversity between groups. Taxonomic analysis showed that female CO subjects had significantly lower abundance of Verrucomicrobia (P = 0.004) at the phylum level, reduced abundance of Akkermansia (P = 0.003) and elevated level of Prevotella (P = 0.038) and Roseburia (P = 0.005) at the genus level.ConclusionsThe present results evidenced altered microbiome composition in schizophrenia patients with central obesity and further suggested the role of the gender factor in the process of gut dysbiosis.

This paper investigated the DNA barcoding of indigenous cinnamon. The essential oil composition of leaves and the partial non-coding internal transcribed spacer (ITS2) region of ribosomal genes from indigenous cinnamon plants (Cinnamomum osmophloeum Kaneh.) were investigated. Leaf essential oils from seven geographical strains of C. osmophloeum Kaneh. were obtained by hydrodistillation and characterized by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Six chemotypes, including cinnamaldehyde, cinnamaldehyde/cinnamyl acetate, cinnamyl acetate, linalool, camphor and mixed, were identified. Seven representative geographical strains were further used to study their genetic diversity based on the partial ITS2 region using PCR amplification and DNA sequencing to evaluate the region's use in the application of DNA barcoding C. osmophloeum Kaneh. A phylogenetic tree was constructed using UPGMA clustering method. Our results indicate that the partial ITS2 nucleotide sequences for all seven geographical strains are identical and not correlated with essential oil composition. The partial ITS2 sequences is sufficient for barcoding C. osmophloeum Kaneh., while that additional genes will need to be analyzed to identify samples of various chemotypes. We believe that this partial ITS2 locus serves as a good starting point for large-scale testing of DNA barcoding of other plant species across Taiwan.

Additional file 1: Figure S1. The AVRDC breeding program of mungbean.