Overview
- Researchers in Seoul used metagenome-assembled genomes to compare stool from 14 coronary artery disease patients with 28 matched controls.
- Fifteen species were associated with disease, with seven enriched in patients and eight depleted relative to healthy participants.
- Functional profiling pointed to inflammation-linked shifts, a loss of short-chain fatty acid producers such as Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, and overactivation of the urea cycle.
- Strain-level differences emerged as typically beneficial taxa like Akkermansia muciniphila or F. prausnitzii showed context-dependent roles, while Lachnospiraceae displayed mixed patterns across species.
- An exploratory machine-learning model separated cases from controls using microbial features with an area under the curve near 0.89, indicating potential for screening that requires validation in larger cohorts.