Fig. 6: DSF improves blood lipid metabolism and reduces Clostridium-mediated 7α-dehydroxylation activity in humans.

a Blood lipid features including TG, TCH, HDL-C, and LDL-C levels in BD and AD groups. Differences in data between 2 groups were calculated by two-sided paired t test. b, c Cladograms generated by LEfSe depicting taxonomic association between microbiome communities from BD and AD groups (LDA > 2.5). Green and blue bars indicate taxa predominant in BD and AD groups, respectively. d Abundance of the genus Clostridium between BD and AD groups FDR-adjusted P-value calculated by LinDA was shown. e Different species abundance of Clostridium in BD and AD groups. FDR-adjusted P-values calculated by LinDA were shown. f Heatmap of the correlations between the species of Clostridium and blood lipid features in BD and AD groups. The correlations were analyzed using Spearman’s correlation (two-sided). FDR-adjusted P < 0.05 (*P <  0.05 and **P  <  0.01) was shown. g Barplot illustrating log2FoldChange relative enrichment of bile acid metabolism activities annotated to the GO function in AD group versus BD group. The color from green to purple represents the significance of the enrichment (two-sided Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed rank test, FDR-adjusted P < 0.05). h Heatmap of the correlations between bile acid metabolism activities and blood lipid features in BD and AD groups. The correlations were analyzed using Spearman’s correlation (two-sided). FDR-adjusted P < 0.05 (*P <  0.05 and **P  <  0.01) was shown. a–h 23 individuals each in BD and AD groups. Each point represented an individual. Data were represented as mean ± SEM. AD volunteers after DSF treatment, BD volunteers before DSF treatment, HDL-C high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, FDR false discovery rate, LDA linear discriminant analysis, LDL-C low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, TCH total cholesterol, TG triglyceride. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.