Microbial dysbiosis index for assessing colitis status in mouse models: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Although countless gut microbiome studies on colitis using mouse models have been carried out, experiments with small sample sizes have encountered reproducibility limitations because of batch effects and statistical errors. In this study, dextran-sodium-sulfate-induced microbial dysbiosis index (DiMDI) was introduced as a reliable dysbiosis index that can be used to assess the state of microbial dysbiosis in DSS-induced mouse models. Meta-analysis of 189 datasets from 11 independent studies was performed to construct the DiMDI. Microbial dysbiosis biomarkers, Muribaculaceae, Alistipes, Turicibacter, and Bacteroides, were selected through four different feature selection methods and used to construct the DiMDI. This index demonstrated a high accuracy of 82.3% and showed strong robustness (88.9%) in the independent cohort. Therefore, DiMDI may be used as a standard for assessing microbial imbalance in DSS-induced mouse models and may contribute to the development of reliable colitis microbiome studies in mouse experiments.