Figure 6.

Oral gavage with hydrogen-water retains the intestinal bacterial composition pattern impaired by TAI. (a–c) Principal component and β diversity analyses were used to measure the shift in the intestinal bacterial composition profile in con and TAI-treated mice (with or without hydrogen-water oral gavage) after irradiation at day 5. Statistically significant differences are indicated: *P<0.05, ***P<0.001; Student’s t-test, n=4. For panel (b), the top and bottom boundaries of each box indicate the 75th and 25th quartile values, respectively, and lines within each box represent the 50th quartile (median) value. Ends of whiskers mark the lowest and highest diversity values in each instance. (d) Alterations in intestinal bacterial patterns at the genus level in con and TAI-treated mice (with or without hydrogen-water oral gavage) were assessed using 16S high-throughput sequencing after irradiation at day 5, n=4. The heatmap is color coded on the basis of row Z-scores. The mice with the highest and lowest bacterial levels are in red and blue, respectively. (e) The relative abundance of the top 10 bacteria at the genus level in con and TAI-treated mice (with or without hydrogen-water oral gavage) was assessed using 16S high-throughput sequencing after irradiation at day 5, n=4. (f) Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) effect size (LEfSe) results showed that the bacteria were significantly different in abundance between the TAI and hydrogen-water groups and indicated the effect size of each differentially abundant bacterial taxon in the small intestine (n=4). Statistically significant differences are indicated: Student’s t-test.