PhD student and resident in equine medicine University College Dublin Tullyallen, Louth, Ireland
Abstract: Background – Faecal microbiome and serum metabolome have been studied in human medicine to provide a better understanding of metabolic derangements including diabetes, but studies in equine medicine are limited.Hypothesis/Objectives – This is a case-control study conducted to identify differences in faecal microbiota and serum metabolites between metabolically normal Connemara ponies and those with Equine Metabolic Syndrome (EMS).Animals – Thirty privately owned Connemara ponies: 15 EMS Phenotype and 15 non-EMS.Methods – EMS was diagnosed by oral sugar test (OST). 16S rRNA gene sequencing was used to identify the microbial communities in faecal samples. ALDEx2 (ANOVA-Like Differential Expression) and LinDA (Linear model for differential abundance analysis) were used to assess the differences in microbial abundance between groups. Serum metabolites were analysed using Liquid chromatography–high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC-MS). “Weighted” gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) was used for multi-omics integration of microbiota-metabolome datasets.Results –The microbiota community composition was significantly different between groups (p= 0.035). EMS ponies showed reduced microbial species richness and evenness compared to non-EMS ponies. The EMS ponies showed an enrichment pattern of metabolites belonging to triglycerides, along with a reduction pattern of other metabolite classes. Multi-omics analysis revealed two modules in metabolome and microbiota datasets that were significantly different between the EMS and non-EMS ponies (p < 0.0001). Conclusions and clinical importance This study suggests that microbiota-metabolome features differ between Connemara ponies with and without EMS. These results provide significant insights that may assist in the search for novel management methods for this condition.
