Yaqi Guo Hang Feng Lin Du Zhenghong Yu ^*

• Henan Provincial People's Hospital, Zhengzhou, China

The gut microbiome compositions of Osteoarthritis (OA) and Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) patients have been revealed; however, the functional genomics, particularly ARGs and VFGs, have not yet been explored.We used gut metagenomic data to elucidate the distribution of ARGs and VFGs. Building on these differences on gut microbiome, we developed a diagnostic model using a random forest classifier based on ARG and VFG abundances.Our results indicate that both OA and RA patients exhibit significantly higher alpha diversity in ARGs, as measured by observed genes, Shannon, and Simpson indices, compared to healthy controls. However, this increased diversity is not significantly different between OA and RA patients themselves. In contrast, VFGs showed a higher diversity in RA compared to healthy individuals, which was not as pronounced in OA patients. An analysis of the top 20 ARGs and VFGs revealed a largely similar composition between the three groups, with notable exceptions of certain genes that were uniquely enriched in either OA or RA patients. This suggests unique microbial patterns associated with each condition. Our beta diversity analysis further demonstrates distinct distributions of ARG and VFG profiles across the three groups, with several genes significantly enriched in both OA and RA patients, indicating potential markers for these diseases. The model achieved high accuracy (74.7%-83.6%) when distinguishing both OA and RA from healthy controls using ARG profiles and substantial accuracy with VFG profiles.These results support the potential of ARGs and VFGs as reliable biomarkers for diagnosing OA and RA.