# Comparison of the gut microbiota of college students with the nine balanced and unbalanced traditional Chinese medicine constitutions and its potential application in fecal microbiota transplantation

## TL;DR

This study explores how traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) constitutions can help identify better donors for fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), which could improve its effectiveness in treating diseases.

## Contribution

The study introduces the use of TCM constitution theory as a novel method for efficiently screening high-quality FMT donors.

## Key findings

- The gut microbiota of balanced and unbalanced TCM constitutions showed significant differences.
- Balanced constitution volunteers had a higher proportion of qualified FMT donors.
- Fecal microbiota from balanced constitution donors had better anti-obesity effects in mice.

## Abstract

Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) has been tested for the prevention and treatment of various intestinal and extra-intestinal diseases, but its efficacy is not stable, which may be due to the lack of an optimized method for screening high-quality donors. The low efficiency and high cost of donor screening are also obstacles to the clinical application of FMT. In this study, we tested the efficiency of the constitution theory of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in screening high-quality FMT donors. College student volunteers were sorted into either the balanced TCM constitution (BC) or unbalanced TCM constitution (UBC) groups, with the latter group comprising eight different constitution types, and the gut microbiota profiles of each UBC were compared with that of BC. Subsequently, the success rates of the qualified donors of BC and UBC volunteers were compared. Finally, the anti-obesity effect of FMT, obtained using the fecal microbiota of BC and UBC donors, was tested on mice with high fat diet-induced obesity. The results showed that the gut microbiota of BC and UBC volunteers were significantly different. There was a higher proportion of qualified FMT donors in the BC volunteer group than in the UBC volunteer group. Moreover, the experiment in mice showed that the fecal microbiota of BC and UBC volunteers conferred different anti-obesity effects. Overall, TCM constitution could be a reference for FMT practice. Our study presents a new idea, namely, using TCM constitution theory to efficiently screen high-quality FMT donors.