The Potential Link between Gut Microbiota and Serum TRAb in Chinese Patients with Severe and Active Graves’ Orbitopathy

Figure 1

Flowchart of our work. Firstly, WGCNA was used to generate the network and to identify GO-related network modules based on the OTU relative abundance. Those gut microbiota with outstanding topological properties were extracted. Secondly, the module-trait association analysis was performed, and the Pearson correlation analysis was used to determine the association between each of the OTUs involved in the modules and GO-related traits. Thirdly, the relationships between the identified bacteria and GO-related traits were further investigated based on the negative binomial regression after adjusting for age and sex. Finally, the identified bacteria were used to classify GO patients by applying the latent class analysis.