Study on the correlation between intestinal flora and trimethylamine oxide on gallbladder stone formation

In patients with gallbladder stones, there are differences in intestinal flora, oxidized trimethylamine, triglyceride and cholesterol levels compared to the healthy population. We investigated whether there is a correlation between gallbladder stones and intestinal flora and other outcomes to provide a new reference for gallbladder stone prevention and treatment. We used 40 patients with gallbladder stones who met the inclusion criteria in the Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, General Hospital of Ningxia Medical University, from January 2021 to December 2021 as a case group. During the same period, 35 medical examiners who underwent health checkups at our hospital served as the control group. We extracted blood, urine, and stool specimens from the case and control groups for the study and analysis of relevant indexes. We found no significant difference in the levels of the phylum Thick-walled Bacteroides and Bacteroides in the case and control populations at the level of bacterial phylum. In the case group population the content of Aspergillus was higher than in the control group (P<0.05). At the level of bacterial genera, the levels of Enterococcus faecalis, Eubacterium were increased in the case group compared to the control group (P<0.05). The levels of trimethylamine oxide in blood and urine were higher in the case group population than in the control group (P0.05). Therefore, we conclude that the distribution of intestinal flora and the abnormalities of oxidized trimethylamine in patients with gallbladder stones suggest that there may be a correlation between these two types of factors on gallbladder stone formation.