Interaction between Atypical Antipsychotics and the Gut Microbiome in a Bipolar Disease Cohort

METHODS In a cross-sectional design, we obtained 16S ribosomal sequences from 117 BD patients (49 AAP-treated, 68 non-AAP-treated). Molecular variance analysis (AMOVA) was used to detect significant accumulation of microbial communities between groups, and the inverse Simpson Diversity Index was used to calculate alpha diversity. The detection of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) occurring differently between the groups was carried out using the effect size of the linear discriminant analysis.

RESULTS The AAP-treated cohort was significantly younger and had an increased body mass index compared to non-AAP-treated patients. The groups did not differ in using other psychotropic drugs, except the higher use of benzodiazepines in the AAP cohort. We found a significant separation between AAP-treated and untreate…