ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol.
Sec. Clinical Microbiology
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2025.1556153
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in Vaginal Microbiome and Metabolite Research: Genetics, Evolution, and Clinical PerspectivesView all 4 articles
Integrated Analysis of Microbiome and Metabolome Reveals Insights into Cervical Neoplasia Aggravation in a Chinese Cohort
Provisionally accepted
- Seventh Medical Center of PLA General Hospital, Beijing, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Cervical carcinoma (CC) remains one of the significant cancers threatening women's health globally. Increasing evidence suggests that alterations in the microbiota are closely associated with cancer development. However, the understanding of reliable biomarkers and underlying mechanisms during the aggravation of cervical neoplasia such as cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) and CC is still relatively limited. In this study, cervical swab samples from 53 healthy controls, 51 high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (HSIL), and 52 CC patients were subjected to 16S rDNA sequencing and metabolomics analysis. We observed significant differences in the cervical microbiota between CC patients and healthy controls or HSIL groups. Compared to the healthy controls, CC patients exhibited increased microbial diversity, decreased abundance of Lactobacillus, and notable changes in microbial composition. Metabolomics analysis revealed significantly elevated levels of the inflammatory mediator Prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) in CC samples. Through random forest modeling and ROC curve analysis, we identified a combination of key microbiota (Porphyromonas, Pseudofulvibacter) and metabolites (Cellopentaose, PGE2) as diagnostic biomarkers with high diagnostic value for CC. Furthermore, we found a significant correlation between the cervical microbiota Porphyromonas and the metabolite PGE2, suggesting a potential role of key microbiota in inducing inflammation. These findings indicate that alterations in cervical microbiota and metabolites may be closely associated with the occurrence and aggravation of cervical neoplasia, providing new insights for further understanding the mechanisms of cervical neoplasia progression and developing novel diagnostic markers and therapeutic approaches.
Keywords: cervical cancer, Cervical squamous intraepithelial lesion, Metabolome, microbiome, biomarkers, Integrated analysis
Received: 06 Jan 2025; Accepted: 08 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhai, Zhao, Wang, Li, Li, Ye, Li, Xu and Meng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Chengfeng Xu, Seventh Medical Center of PLA General Hospital, Beijing, China
Yuanguang Meng, Seventh Medical Center of PLA General Hospital, Beijing, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.