Short sleep time has a greater impact on the gut microbiota of female.

Background/objective: Short sleep duration (SSD) affects people's health in multiple ways. This study attempted to explore the effect of SSD on the gut microbiota.

Methods: In the American Gut Project Database, 361 individuals (without troubled by disease recently) with less than 6 h of sleep per day were obtained and matched with normal sleep time individuals according to gender, age, and BMI. Furthermore, the raw data of 16s rRNA in feces were downloaded and analyzed using QIIME2, and STAMP was used for data statistics. PICRUST2 was used for predicting the alteration of microbial function.

Results: The SSD did not affect the microbial α-diversity. SSD increased the abundance of the phylum Verrucomicrobia and the families Rikenellaceae, Verrucomicrobiaceae, and S24-7, and decrased the Coriobacteriaceae. Moreover, PICRUST2 predicted that SSD affected 15 metabolic pathways. Subgroup analyses showed that SSD had more significant effects on the microbiota in normal-weight females.

Conclusion: SSD substantially modifies the abundance of specific gut microbiota taxa, exerting a pronounced influence particularly on females, highlighting the need for further investigation into the bidirectional relationship between sleep patterns and gut microbiota.