Fig. 4
Variations in the gut resistome of VAP patients compared to healthy controls. (A) Comparison of ARG subtype species between VAP patients and healthy controls. No significant difference was observed between the two groups (p = 0.6308). (B) The total relative abundance of ARGs was significantly higher in the gut of VAP patients compared to healthy controls, as indicated by the copies of ARGs/16S rRNA gene. (C) Box plot illustrating the Shannon index for ARGs in the gut microbiota of VAP patients and healthy controls. Although no significant difference was detected (p = 0.1956), a trend toward lower diversity was observed in patients. (D) PCoA plot based on Bray-Curtis dissimilarity, displaying the distribution of ARG profiles in the gut microbiota of VAP patients and healthy controls. (E) Heatmap presenting the profiles of different ARG types, assessed by log10 ARGs/16S rRNA, highlighting distinct antibiotic resistance patterns between VAP patients and healthy controls. Statistical differences are marked in red next to each ARG type. (F) Histogram showing linear discriminant analysis (LDA) scores from LEfSe analysis of ARGs in the gut microbiome. The LDA score is greater than 4.0. Statistics by the unpaired two-tailed Student’s t test. Values shown are the mean ± SD. ** p < 0.01. *** p < 0.001. ns: no significance