Cited by 50Dementia and Cognitive Impairment ResearchGut microbiota and healthAlzheimer's disease research and treatments

Early changes of fecal short‐chain fatty acid levels in patients with mild cognitive impairments

Open access
Gao, Chao, Li, Binyin, He, Yixi, Huang, Pai, Du, Juanjuan, He, Guiying, Zhang, Pingchen, Tang, Huidong +1 more·2023·CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics

Abstract

Aims: To compare the fecal levels of short‐chain fatty acids (SCFAs) in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and normal controls (NCs) and to examine whether fecal SCFAs could be used as the biomarker for the identification of patients with MCI. To examine the relationship between fecal SCFAs and amyloid‐β (Aβ) deposition in the brain. Methods: A cohort of 32 MCI patients, 23 Parkinson's disease (PD) patients, and 27 NC were recruited in our study. Fecal levels of SCFAs were measured using chromatography and mass spectrometry. Disease duration, ApoE genotype, body mass index, constipation, and diabetes were evaluated. To assess cognitive impairment, we used the Mini‐Mental Status Examination (MMSE). To assess brain atrophy, the degree of medial temporal atrophy (MTA score, Grade 0–4) was measured by structural MRI. Aβ positron emission tomography with 18 F‐florbetapir (FBP) was performed in seven MCI patients at the time of stool sampling and in 28 MCI patients at an average of 12.3 ± 0.4 months from the time of stool sampling to detect and quantify Aβ deposition in the brain. Results: Compared with NC, MCI patients had significantly lower fecal levels of acetic acid, butyric acid, and caproic acid. Among fecal SCFAs, acetic acid performed the best in discriminating MCI from NC, achieved an AUC of 0.752 ( p = 0.001, 95% CI: 0.628–0.876), specificity of 66.7%, and sensitivity of 75%. By combining fecal levels of acetic acid, butyric acid, and caproic acid, the diagnostic specificity was significantly improved, reaching 88.9%. To better verify the diagnostic performance of SCFAs, we randomly assigned 60% of participants into training dataset and 40% into testing dataset. Only acetic acid showed significantly difference between these two groups in the training dataset. Based on the fecal levels of acetic acid, we achieved the ROC curve. Next, the ROC curve was evaluated in the independent test data and 61.5% (8 in 13) of patients with MCI, and 72.7% (8 in 11) of NC could be identified correctly. Subgroup analysis showed that reduced fecal SCFAs in MCI group were negatively associated with Aβ deposition in cognition‐related brain regions. Conclusion: Reductions in fecal SCFAs were observed in patients with MCI compared with NC. Reduced fecal SCFAs were negatively associated with Aβ deposition in cognition‐related brain regions in MCI group. Our findings suggest that gut metabolite SCFAs have the potential to serve as early diagnostic biomarkers for distinguishing patients with MCI from NC and could serve as potential targets for preventing AD.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1111/cns.14252

Cites

42 of 42 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

1 of the 43 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Gao, C., Li, B., He, Y., Huang, P., Du, J., He, G., Zhang, P., Tang, H., & Chen, S.
Affiliations
Shanghai Jiao Tong University (CN)
Corresponding author
  • Tang, Huidong
  • Chen, Shengdi
Venue
CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2023-05-05
Volume
29
Issue
11
Pages
3657-3666
ISSN
  • 1755-5930 (ISSN-L)
  • 1755-5949
OpenAlex
W4372334325
Cited by
50
References
43
Citations by year
2026: 13 · 2025: 20 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 1
FWCI
10.18
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders
National Natural Science Foundation of China
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Gut microbiota and health
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Alzheimer's disease research and treatments
Keywords
mild cognitive impairment, fecal short-chain fatty acids, acetic acid, butyrate, hexanoic acid, biomarkers, amyloid-beta deposition, Parkinson's disease, medial temporal lobe atrophy, diagnostic accuracy, gut-brain axis, Alzheimer's disease risk, APOE genotype, 18F-florbetapir PET, brain atrophy, constipation, diabetes mellitus
MeSH terms
Acetates, Alzheimer Disease, Atrophy, Caproates, Fatty Acids, Volatile, Humans, Amyloid beta-Peptides, Butyric Acid, Positron-Emission Tomography, Cognitive Dysfunction

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review