| Summary: | Gut microbiota are involved in both host health and disease and can be stratified based on bacteriological composition. However, gut microbiota clustering data are limited for Asians. In this study, fecal microbiota of 1803 Japanese subjects, including 283 healthy individuals, were analyzed by 16S rRNA sequencing and clustered using two models. The association of various diseases with each community type was also assessed. Five and fifteen communities were identified using partitioning around medoids (PAM) and the Dirichlet multinominal mixtures model, respectively. Bacteria exhibiting characteristically high abundance among the PAM-identified types were of the family <i>Ruminococcaceae</i> (Type A) and genera <i>Bacteroides</i>, <i>Blautia</i>, and <i>Faecalibacterium</i> (Type B); <i>Bacteroides</i>, <i>Fusobacterium</i>, and <i>Proteus</i> (Type C); and <i>Bifidobacterium</i> (Type D), and <i>Prevotella</i> (Type E). The most noteworthy community found in the Japanese subjects was the <i>Bifidobacterium</i>-rich community. The odds ratio based on type E, which had the largest population of healthy subjects, revealed that other types (especially types A, C, and D) were highly associated with various diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease, functional gastrointestinal disorder, and lifestyle-related diseases. Gut microbiota community typing reproducibly identified organisms that may represent enterotypes peculiar to Japanese individuals and that are partly different from those of indivuals from Western countries.
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