Fig. 3

Patients with RA are characterized by expansion of rare microbial lineages. a, b LefSe analysis was performed to identify differentially abundant taxa, which are highlighted on the phylogenetic tree in cladogram format (a) and for which the LDA scores are shown (b). Red and green colors indicate an increase or decrease in taxa, respectively, in the RA patients compared with controls. Among the identified taxa, the association of the genus Eggerthella was the most significant and remained significant after Bonferroni correction for multiple testing. The genus Faecalibacterium had the largest LDA score. c Representation of the relative abundances of Eggerthella and Faecalibacterium in RA patients, first-degree relatives (FDR) and healthy controls (HC). Each bar represents the abundance of a given sample. Solid and dashed lines indicate mean and median, respectively