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. 2024 Jul 18;106:105246. doi: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2024.105246

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

Association of the intestinal microbiota with RT-induced GI toxicity. (a) Heatmap showing the normalised abundance profiles (standardised clr-transformed relative abundance values) of the core microbiota genera (rows) from patients in the MicroLearner PCa discovery cohort (columns); core genera were defined as those genera found in at least 10% of the cohort with relative abundance ≥2%; hierarchical clustering was used to discover 8 clusters of patients (black vertical lines) with similar core compositions to which we assigned a microbiota class for the risk for developing acute GI toxicity during RT. (b) Bar plot showing the toxicity rate observed in each cluster of patients and the cluster size in unit of population percentage (cluster sequence same as in the heatmap); cluster number three was significantly enriched for toxicity (60% toxicity rate, high microbiota risk) while cluster five was significantly enriched for no toxicity (0% toxicity rate, low microbiota risk); other clusters show toxicity rate in the range 3–25% (moderate microbiota risk). (c) Statistic of normalised indices of toxicity risk factors visualised by microbiota risk class. (d) Heatmap showing the microbiota functional profiles (standardised relative abundance values) of 13 selected KEGG Orthologs (KOs, rows) imputed from the core microbiota abundance profiles of the patients in the MicroLearner PCa discovery cohort (columns); KOs selected have an average within-group absolute z-score abundance value >1 in the high-risk microbiota patients; hierarchical clustering was used to define 3 clusters of patients (yellow vertical lines) and to reveal the functional pattern associated with the microbiota composition at high-risk for toxicity.