Abstract

The study's objective is to investigate the correlation between gut microbiota and traditional Chinese medicine syndrome patterns in patients with chronic enteritis and insomnia. It also aims to assess the impact of antibiotic enema on the intestinal flora and traditional Chinese medicine syndrome types of patients with insomnia. Between January 2019 and December 2022, 60 patients with chronic insomnia (primary insomnia) were recruited from a hospital clinic based on exclusion and inclusion criteria. According to the standard of traditional Chinese medicine syndrome type, the intervention group received antibiotic enema treatment, while the control group received placebo enema treatment. The treatment period was 4 w. Statistical methods such as frequency and percentage were used to process the data to explore the correlation between chronic insomnia and traditional Chinese medicine syndrome types. The impact of antibiotic enema treatment on insomnia was evaluated. Initially, there was no significant difference in the Shannon and Simpson indices, which measure intestinal microbial diversity, between the two groups (p>0.05). However, beta-diversity analysis showed significant differences in intestinal microbial composition between the two groups (p<0.05). Specifically, the relative abundance of Firmicutes was lower in the intervention group, while the relative abundance of Bacteroidetes was higher. Post-intervention, the intestinal microbial composition of the intervention group demonstrated significant changes, characterized by a significant increase in the relative abundance of Bacteroidetes and a notable decrease in the Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratio (p<0.05). As for insomnia symptoms, sleep quality, sleep latency and sleep time in both groups were significantly improved after 4 w of treatment (p<0.05). However, the improvement in the intervention group was significantly higher than that in the control group (p<0.05). In addition, the proportion of patients with the syndrome of "liver qi stagnation and spleen deficiency" in the intervention group was significantly decreased, in contrast, the control group did not exhibit significant changes in their intestinal microbial composition (p<0.05). The findings of this study suggest a correlation between gut microbiota and traditional Chinese medicine syndrome patterns in patients with insomnia and chronic enteritis. Furthermore, antibiotic enema treatment was shown to significantly alleviate insomnia symptoms and enteritis.