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IntroductionThe biological contact oxidation reactor is an effective technology for the treatment of antibiotic wastewater, but there has been little research investigating its performance on the sulfamethazine wastewater treatment.MethodsIn this study, a novel two-stage biological contact oxidation reactor was used for the first time to explore the impact of sulfamethazine (SMZ) on the performance, microbial community, extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), and antibiotic-resistant genes (ARGs).ResultsThe chemical oxygen demand (COD) and ammonia nitrogen (NH4+-N) removal efficiencies kept stable at 86.93% and 83.97% with 0.1–1 mg/L SMZ addition and were inhibited at 3 mg/L SMZ. The presence of SMZ could affect the production and chemical composition of EPS in the biofilm, especially for the pronounced increase in TB-PN yield in response against the threat of SMZ. Metagenomics sequencing demonstrated that SMZ could impact on the microbial community, a high abundance of Candidatus_Promineofilum, unclassified_c__Anaerolineae, and unclassified_c__Betaproteobacteria were positively correlated to SMZ, especially for Candidatus_Promineofilum.DiscussionCandidatus_Promineofilum not only had the ability of EPS secretion, but also was significantly associated with the primary SMZ resistance genes of sul1 and sul2, which developed resistance against SMZ pressure through the mechanism of targeted gene changes, further provided a useful and easy-implement technology for sulfamethazine wastewater treatment.

BackgroundObservational epidemiological studies suggested an association between the gut microbiota and breast cancer, but it remains unclear whether the gut microbiota causally influences the risk of breast cancer. We employed two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to investigate this association.MethodsWe used summary statistics of the gut microbiome from a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 18,340 individuals in the MiBioGen study. GWAS summary statistics for overall breast cancer risk and hormone receptor subtype-specific analyses were obtained from the UK Biobank and FinnGen databases, totaling 400,000 individuals. The inverse variance-weighted (IVW) MR method was used to examine the causal relationship between the gut microbiome and breast cancer and its subtypes. Sensitivity analyses were conducted using maximum likelihood, MR-Egger, and MR pleiotropic residual sums and outliers methods.ResultsThe IVW estimates indicated that an increased abundance of Genus_Sellimonas is causally associated with an increased risk of ER+ breast cancer [odds ratio (OR) = 1.09, p = 1.72E−04, false discovery rate (FDR) = 0.02], whereas an increased abundance of Genus_Adlercreutzia was protective against ER+ breast cancer (OR = 0.88, p = 6.62E−04, FDR = 0.04). For Her2+ breast cancer, an increased abundance of Genus_Ruminococcus2 was associated with a decreased risk (OR = 0.77, p = 4.91E−04, FDR = 0.04), whereas an increased abundance of Genus_Erysipelatoclostridium was associated with an increased risk (OR = 1.25, p = 6.58E−04, FDR = 0.04). No evidence of heterogeneity or horizontal pleiotropy was found.ConclusionOur study revealed a gut microbiota–mammary axis, providing important data supporting the potential use of the gut microbiome as a candidate target for breast cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.

Growing evidence has demonstrated that hypertension was associated with dysbiosis of intestinal flora. Since intestinal microbes could critically regulate neurofunction via the intestinal–brain axis, the study aimed to reveal the role and prediction value of intestinal flora alteration in hypertension-associated cognitive impairment. A cohort of 97 participants included 63 hypertension patients and 34 healthy controls. The structure of intestinal flora was analyzed by V3–V4 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. The cognitive function was assessed using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) scale, and 31 patients were considered to have cognitive impairment (MoCA < 26). Patients with cognitive impairment had considerable alterations in intestinal flora structure, composition, and function compared with normal-cognitive patients. In particular, the abundance of LPS-containing taxa (Proteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria, Enterobacterales, Enterobacteriaceae, and Escherichia–Shigella) and SCFA-producing taxon (Prevotella) significantly changed in cognition-impaired patients. Tax4Fun predication results showed downregulation of glycan biosynthesis and metabolism in hypertension patients with cognitive impairment. Additionally, the pathway was demonstrated to be significantly correlated with LPS-containing taxa (Proteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria, Enterobacterales, Enterobacteriaceae, and Escherichia–Shigella) and SCFA-producing taxon Prevotella. Furthermore, the taxa-based multiple joint prediction model (9×) was demonstrated to have excellent diagnostic potential for cognitive impairment of hypertension patients (AUC = 0.944). The current study revealed the involvement of intestinal microbiota dysbiosis in cognition-impaired hypertension patients and provided an objective predictive index for this cognition disorder.