Beta Diversity
Based on unweighted UniFrac, weighted UniFrac, and Bray-Curtis distance metrics, the PCoA was performed to measure the similarity of microbial communities in the two corhorts (Figure 1G, H, I). ANOSIM revealed that there were significant differences in bacterial communities between mild and moderate/severe groups using the Bray-Curtis distance metric (statistic R = 0.130, P = 0.021, number of permutations = 999). However, this clustering was not significant when the analysis was based on unweighted UniFrac distance metric (statistic R = 0.044, P = 0.22, number of permutations = 999) and weighted UniFrac distance metric (statistic R = 0.031, P = 0.258, number of permutations = 999).
Specific Genera Associated with severity and sub-symptoms of OAB
The LEfSe algorithm was utilized to identify the specific bacteria genera associated with OAB severity, and revealed no significant difference in bacterial genera between two groups. Spearmans correlation analysis was utilized to identify the specific bacteria genera associated with sub-symptoms of OAB. In all, eight genera showed significant correlation with one or more of the OABSS components; one with Daytime frequency, four with Nighttime frequency, two with Urgency, and two with Urgency incontinence as shown in Table 4. The strongest correlation was between Bosea and Nighttime frequency (Correlation coefficient=0.472, P < 0.001).
DISCUSSION