The role of the gut microbiome in weight-gain in schizophrenia patients treated with atypical antipsychotics: Evidence based on altered composition and function in a cross-sectional study.

OBJECTIVES: We aimed to explore the interconnection between the weight-gain in schizophrenia patients with atypical antipsychotic treatment and gut microbiome. METHODS: This study employed a cross-sectional design, encompassing a total of 88 schizophrenia patients with long-term atypical antipsychotic treatment. The 16S rRNA gene sequencing was used to identify gut microbiome contents. RESULTS: No significant differences in alpha diversity between normal-weight and overweight schizophrenia treated with atypical antipsychotics. The beta diversity analysis showed that overweight patients clustered tightly while normal-weight patients clustered widely. For taxonomic composition, overweight patients had a lower relative abundance in Porphyromonadaceae at family level and Butyrivibrio at genus level, but higher relative abundance in Ruminococcus2 and Clostridium_XIVa at genus level than normal-weight patients. Function prediction revelated that four pathways (including Cell cycle, Non-homologous end-joining, Vibrio cholerae infection and Meiosis-yeast) were significantly different between groups. Correlation analysis indicated that Klebsiella, Butyrivibrio, Unassigned, Methanosphaera, Holdemania, Anaerotruncus were negatively, while Veillonella was positively correlated with BMI in patients. CONCLUSION: Our findings offer evidence that perturbations in the gut microbiome composition, encompassing taxa such as Porphyromonadaceae, Butyrivibrio, Ruminococcus2, and Clostridium_XIVa, in conjunction with distinct functional pathways including Cell cycle, Non-homologous end-joining, Vibrio cholerae infection, and Meiosis-yeast, might contribute to the weight-gain in schizophrenia treated with atypical antipsychotics.

Facile synthesis of 3D porous thermally exfoliated g-C3N4 nanosheet with enhanced photocatalytic degradation of organic dye.

3D porous framework composed of exfoliated ultrathin nanosheets is a hot topic in the field of energy storage and conversion. A facile method to prepare 3D mesoporous C3N4 with few-layered nanosheets interconnected in large quantity via H2SO4 intercalation and subsequent thermal treatment was described herein. The obtained thermally-exfoliated C3N4 (TE-C3N4) was thoroughly characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM), UV-Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) measurements. The detailed analysis indicated that TE-C3N4 possessed enlarged inter-layer space, enhanced UV-light adsorption and high specific surface area with 3D interconnected structure composed of ultrathin 2D nanosheets. Compared to bulk C3N4, TE-C3N4 showed an enhanced photocatalytic activity for photodegradation of Rhodamine B under UV-light irradiation and exhibited no significant loss of photocatalytic activity after 11 recycled runs. The pseudo-first reaction rate constant for TE-C3N4 was about four times higher than that for pure bulk-C3N4. The better photocatalytic performance could be attributed to more active catalytic sites, prolonged photo-excited carrier lifetime and shorted pathway of the carriers to the reaction sites.