Pronounced gut microbiota signatures in patients with <i>JAK2V617F-</i>positive essential thrombocythemiaOriginal paper
Karen Pendergrass is a microbiome researcher specializing in microbiome-targeted interventions (MBTIs). She systematically analyzes scientific literature to identify microbial patterns, develop hypotheses, and validate interventions. As the founder of the Microbiome Signatures Database, she bridges microbiome research with clinical practice. In 2012, based on her own investigative research, she became the first documented case of FMT for Celiac Disease, four years before the first published case study.
Read MoreWhat was studied?
Researchers compared the gut microbiota of 54 patients with essential thrombocythemia (ET), split by JAK2V617F mutation status, against 42 healthy controls.
How was it studied?
Gut microbiota composition was profiled using amplicon-based 16S rRNA gene sequencing of the V3-V4 region, comparing richness and overall bacterial composition between groups.
What did they find?
Patients with ET had higher gut bacterial richness (median 283.5 vs 191.5) and a different overall bacterial composition than healthy controls. Firmicutes abundance was lower in ET (51% vs 59%), driven partly by a drop in Faecalibacterium (8% vs 15%), an immunoregulatory genus. These microbiota shifts were more pronounced in patients carrying the JAK2V617F mutation and resembled patterns previously reported in polycythemia vera.
Why it matters
The findings suggest altered immune regulation in ET may be linked to gut microbiota changes, though the direction of causality remains unclear.