{"doi":"10.1002/art.41955","title":"Association of Increased Serum Lipopolysaccharide, But Not Microbial Dysbiosis, With <scp>Obesity‐Related</scp> Osteoarthritis","abstract":"OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that an altered gut microbiota (dysbiosis) plays a role in obesity-associated osteoarthritis (OA). METHODS: , recruited from the Johnston County Osteoarthritis Project. OA patients (n = 50) had hand and knee OA (Kellgren/Lawrence [K/L] grade ≥2 or arthroplasty). Controls (n = 42) had no hand OA and a K/L grade of 0-1 for the knees. Compositional analysis of stool samples was carried out by 16S ribosomal RNA amplicon sequencing. Alpha- and beta-diversity and differences in taxa relative abundances were determined. Blood samples were used for multiplex cytokine analysis and measures of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and LPS binding protein. Germ-free mice were gavaged with patient- or control-pooled fecal samples and fed a 40% fat, high-sucrose diet for 40 weeks. Knee OA was evaluated histologically. RESULTS: On average, OA patients were slightly older than the controls, consisted of more women, and had a higher mean BMI, higher mean Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index pain score, and higher mean K/L grade. There were no significant differences in α- or β-diversity or genus level composition between patients and controls. Patients had higher plasma levels of osteopontin (P = 0.01) and serum LPS (P < 0.0001) compared to controls. Mice transplanted with patient or control microbiota exhibited a significant difference in α-diversity (P = 0.02) and β-diversity, but no differences in OA severity were observed. CONCLUSION: The lack of differences in the gut microbiota, but increased serum LPS levels, suggest the possibility that increased intestinal permeability allowing for greater absorption of LPS, rather than a dysbiotic microbiota, may contribute to the development of OA associated with obesity.","journal":"Arthritis & Rheumatology","year":2021,"id":153091,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":71,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.8311,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":414465,"name":"Liubov Arbeeva","orcid":"0000-0001-5004-419X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":650606,"name":"Kathryn L. Kelley","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":29081,"name":"Anthony A. Fodor","orcid":"0000-0002-9305-4264","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":404190,"name":"Shan Sun","orcid":"0000-0003-0349-2664","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":485795,"name":"Veronica Ulici","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":598287,"name":"Lara Longobardi","orcid":"0000-0002-0156-847X","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":649680,"name":"Yang Cui","orcid":"0000-0002-6053-5571","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":594771,"name":"Delisha A. Stewart","orcid":"0000-0001-7516-2790","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":403431,"name":"Susan J. Sumner","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":245450,"name":"M. Andrea Azcárate-Peril","orcid":"0000-0003-0325-1289","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":36349,"name":"R. Balfour Sartor","orcid":"0000-0002-7820-632X","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":345498,"name":"Ian M. Carroll","orcid":"0000-0001-8615-5086","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":528888,"name":"Jordan B. Renner","orcid":"0000-0003-2137-3052","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":318561,"name":"Joanne M. Jordan","orcid":"0000-0003-2469-9955","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":331494,"name":"Amanda E. Nelson","orcid":"0000-0002-9344-7877","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":404668,"name":"Richard F. Loeser","orcid":"0000-0003-2832-6144","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":51,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:43:39.820288Z","pmid":"34423918","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}