Abstract 134: Dysbiosis of gut microbiota in chronic stressed patients with endometriosis

Abstract Although endometriosis is a benign disease, it has malignant characters such as invasion and migration. Besides, there is an endometrial type of ovarian cancer, which means endometriosis is similar to malignant disease at some extent. Existing researches showed that patients with endometriosis often have high level of chronic stress. Furthermore, chronic stress can promote the growth of endometriosis by activating the β-adrenergic signaling pathway. Gut microbiota is reported to be related to the stress level through the gut-brain axis. So we wonder whether gut microbiota is associated with chronic stress level in endometriosis patients, which may provide a new clinical intervention method to improve prognosis. We grouped the endometriosis patients into stress group and control group with GAD-7 and PHQ-9 questionnaires and collected patients' fecal and tissues samples. Gut microbiota compositions were analyzed by the 16SrRNA gene sequencing-based method and we performed Immunohistochemistry (IHC) to detect the activation of inflammatory pathways in endometriosis tissues. We found that in patients with endometriosis, dysbiosis of gut microbiota is associated with patients' stress levels and Paraprevotella, Odoribacter, Veillonell and Ruminococcus show significant differences with reduced levels in chronic stressed endometriosis patients group, which represents a disease-specific change of gut microbiota on the genus level. Besides, compared to the control group, the expression level of inflammatory cytokines, NF-κB p65 and COX-2, increased in the chronic stressed patients group, which means that dysbiosis of gut microbiota may active the inflammatory pathway of gut-brain axis. In conclusion, we found new disease-specific changes of gut microbiota in chronic stressed patients with endometriosis, which can be a new examination target of chronic stress level and may provide an adjuvant therapy method for clinical psychological intervention, reducing the stress level and improving the prognosis of endometriosis patients. Citation Format: Jing Xu, Yu Kang, Yinhua Yu. Dysbiosis of gut microbiota in chronic stressed patients with endometriosis [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2018; 2018 Apr 14-18; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 134.