Figure 3.

β diversity of the gut bacterial community was influenced by hyperandrogenism (HA), and random forests identified bacterial taxa that distinguished between healthy women and women with PCOS. (a) PCoA of β diversity (unweighted UniFrac distances) of fecal samples from healthy women (controls; n = 43) and women with PCOS (n = 66). Proportion of variance explained by each principal coordinate (PC) axis is denoted on the corresponding axis. Permutation analysis of variance of the unweighted UniFrac distances indicated that hyperandrogenism had a strong influence on the gut microbial community (P = 0.0009). (b) CCA represents the relationship between β diversity and specific variables of interest, such as HA, testosterone, and hirsutism. CCA demonstrated that changes in the gut microbial communities between healthy women and women with PCOS correlated with hirsutism (permutation test; P = 0.06). Proportion of variance explained by each CCA axis is denoted on the corresponding axis. The arrows represent the direction and strength of the correlation between gut microbiome composition and specific variables of interest. (c) A random forest classifier was used to identify bacterial observed SVs that best distinguished between healthy women (controls) and women with PCOS. The relative mean abundances (mean ± standard error of the mean) of the top eight most discriminant observed SVs are identified to the genus and species level when possible.