With great interest, we read the paper by Ammer-Hermenau et al , which features a multicentre microbiome study that included buccal and rectal samples taken at admission from 450 patients with acute pancreatitis.1 Severe acute pancreatitis was post hoc defined as persistent organ failure and/or collections that required drainage. These patients were propensity score matched with patients with mild acute pancreatitis. Remarkedly, over-representation of 10 known short-chain fatty acid (SCFA)-producing bacteria was found in the severe group. The authors conclude that SCFAs might be associated with worse outcomes and speculate that the increased mortality that was observed in the intervention group of the Probiotics in Pancreatitis Trial (PROPATRIA) could be explained by SCFA producers in the probiotics formula.2 There are, however, some limitations to this study, and we believe the author’s statements are in need of nuance. First, the authors did not include a control group of healthy volunteers. Therefore, it is not possible to conclude from these data that SCFA producers are increased in the severe acute pancreatitis group or decreased in the mild group, compared with healthy subjects. Second, the authors …

中文翻译：

---

严重急性胰腺炎患者的短链脂肪酸：朋友还是敌人？


我们怀着极大的兴趣阅读了 Ammer-Hermenau 等人的论文，其中一项多中心微生物组研究，其中包括 450 名急性胰腺炎患者入院时采集的口腔和直肠样本。这些患者的倾向评分与轻度急性胰腺炎患者相匹配。值得注意的是，在重度组中发现了 10 种已知的产生短链脂肪酸 （SCFA） 的细菌的过度代表。作者得出结论，SCFA 可能与较差的结果相关，并推测在胰腺炎益生菌试验 （PROPATRIA） 的干预组中观察到的死亡率增加可以用益生菌配方中的 SCFA 生产商来解释。然而，这项研究存在一些局限性，我们认为作者的陈述需要细微差别。首先，作者没有纳入健康志愿者的对照组。因此，无法从这些数据中得出结论，与健康受试者相比，严重急性胰腺炎组的 SCFA 产生者增加或轻度组减少。其次，作者......