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Rhubarb Alleviates Acute Lung Injury by Modulating Gut Microbiota Dysbiosis in Mice

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A Correction to this article was published on 30 April 2022

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Abstract

Intestinal microbiota disorders can aggravate pulmonary inflammation during acute lung injury (ALI). As a traditional Chinese herb, Rhubarb can regulated the gut microbiota. Therefore, this study was conducted to test the hypothesis that rhubarb alleviates gut microbiota dysbiosis and inflammation. Feces were collected from patients with ALI to detect the gut microbiota using 16S rDNA sequencing. Subsequently, a mouse model of ALI was established using lipopolysaccharide to investigate changes in the gut microbiota, the peripheral blood was attained for detecting the Th17/Treg cell ratio and the serum level of HDAC6 and HDAC9, and the effect of rhubarb treatment on the gut microbiota and Th17/Treg ratio were also evaluated. The results indicated that both the Firmicutes phylum decreased and the Bacteroidetes phylum increased were identified in patients with ALI, which induced the alternation of histone metabolites. The mice models also showed a similar imbalance in the Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratio at phylum of level. Rhubarb treatment alleviated the damaged lung tissue, accelerated Alistipes, Clostridium, and Lactobacillus proliferation at the level of genus, increased the level of HDAC6 in both the mice lung tissue and serum, and markedly reduced the Treg cells and increased the Th17 cells in the spleen tissue. The study suggested that both patients and mouse models with ALI presented gut microbiota dysbiosis, and lead to a Th17/Treg cell imbalance in ALI mouse. Rhubarb promoted Alistipes, Clostridium, and Lactobacillus proliferation, increased the HDAC6 concentration, restored the Th17/Treg cell balance, and protected against ALI.

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Data Availability

The raw materials were uploaded to the NCBI BioProject (NO: SRP357547).

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Acknowledgements

We thank Traci Raley, MS, ELS, from Liwen Bianji, Edanz Editing China (www.liwenbianji.cn/ac) for editing a draft of this manuscript.

Funding

Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (LY18H290008), Natural Science Foundation of China (81973590) and the Medical and Health Science and Technology Plan of Zhejiang Province (2019KY006) provided financial support in the form of researcher funding. The sponsor had no role in the design or conduct of this research.

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  1. Department of Respiratory Medicine in Zhejiang Hospital Affiliated To Medical School of Zhejiang University, 1229 Gudun Road, Xihu District, Hangzhou, 310012, Zhejiang, China

    Tingyu Tang, Fei Wang, Juan Liu, Wu Ye, Tian Zhao & Zhijun Li

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Contributions

TYT drafted the manuscript, WF and YW collected the samples and analyze data, TZ contributed to perform detection and prepare tables, LZJ conceived and planned the study design. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Zhijun Li.

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The study was conducted according to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki in 1975, as revised in 1983, and was approved by the Ethic Committee of Zhejiang Hospital (Grant NO: 2019-28 (K)).

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Tang, T., Wang, F., Liu, J. et al. Rhubarb Alleviates Acute Lung Injury by Modulating Gut Microbiota Dysbiosis in Mice. Curr Microbiol 79, 116 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00284-022-02811-x

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