Fig. 2: BBR significantly altered gut microbiome symbiosis after 13 weeks of treatment.

a Gene count (upper panel) and Shannon index (lower panel) of genes in different arms, baseline and post treatment; Plac, Placebo, n = 96; Prob, probiotics treatment, n = 98; BBR, berberine treatment, n = 85; Prob + BBR: berberine plus probiotics treatment, n = 102; *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, two-sided Kruskal–Wallis test. Dark lines in the boxes indicate medians, the width of the notches is the IQR, the lowest and highest values within 1.5 times the IQR from the first and third quartiles. b Distance-based redundancy analysis (dbRDA) plot based on Bray–Curtis distances of species in post-treatment samples was performed to assess the difference between the four treatment arms (Permanova P < 0.001). Projection of species-level gut microbiome samples constrained by treatment methods. Marginal box plots show the separation of the constrained projection coordinates (boxes show medians and quartiles, error bars extend to most the extreme value within 1.5 interquartile ranges), Plac, n = 96; Prob, n = 98; BBR, n = 85; Prob + BBR, n = 102. c Venn diagram showing the overlapping of microbial species among the four treatment arms that were altered from baseline to post treatment, two-sided Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-rank test, q < 0.05. d Heatmap of gut microbial species that showed significantly changed their relative abundances (RAs) post treatment vs. baseline. Plac, n = 96; Prob, n = 98; BBR, n = 85; Prob + BBR: n = 102. The changes in nine species in probiotics formula ingested by participants were separately shown below. *q < 0.05, two-sided Wilcoxon match-pairs signed-rank test. The colour key represents the Z score. Bifidobacterium catenulatum–Bpc, B. catenulatum–Bifidobacterium pseudocatenulatum complex. Source data and exact P-value are provided in the Source Data file.