ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Endocrinol.
Sec. Clinical Diabetes
This article is part of the Research TopicFuture Horizons in Diabetes: Integrating Gut Microbiota, AI, and Personalized CareView all 9 articles
The Intestinal microbiota of patients with type 2 diabetes is associated with the C-512T polymorphism of the FOXC2 gene
Provisionally accepted
- 1First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Kunming, China
- 2Anhui Provincial Hospital, Hefei, China
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Objective: To investigate the correlation between the C-512T polymorphism of the FOXC2 gene and intestinal microbiota in patients with T2DM. Methods: Peripheral blood and fecal specimens were collected from 120 patients with T2DM and tested for the C-512T polymorphism of the FOXC2 gene by DNA sequencing. Based on the genotype test results, 120 patients were finally included and divided into CC, CT, and TT groups (40 patients in each group). The structural composition and function of the intestinal microbiota were analyzed using 16S rRNA gene sequencing, and differences between groups of intestinal microbiota were assessed. Results: Alpha Diversity analysis suggested that there was no prominent difference in the abundance and diversity of intestinal microbiota among CC, CT, and TT groups. PCoA analysis in Beta diversity suggested that the composition of enteric flora might be different between CC and CT groups (P=0.006078, P<0.05); Anosim analysis showed that the differences in the structure of the intestinal microbiota were greater among the three groups than within the groups (R=0.02203, P=0.035, P<0.05), with the greatest variability in the CC and TT groups. Finally, LefSe analysis revealed that Coriobacteriia, Clostridiales, Clostridiaceae, and Collinsella were significantly more abundant in the CC group than in the TT group. Conclusion: The C-512T polymorphism in the FOXC2 gene has been associated with the structural abundance and species composition of type 2 diabetic intestinal microbiota.
Keywords: intestinal microbiota, type 2 diabetes mellitus, Collinsella, FOXC2 gene, genepolymorphism
Received: 27 Jul 2025; Accepted: 12 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhou, Liang, Zhang, Su, Zhao and Nian. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xin Nian, nianxin@kmmu.edu.cn
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