Fig. 4

The diversity analysis of gut microbiota in the study subjects. Violin plots of α-diversity analysis in different comparison groups: females vs. males (A), HTN group vs. control group in females (C) and males (E), respectively. Each plot represents one index of the α-diversity distribution, including Shannon, Chao1, Simpson and ACE indices, for each comparison groups. Wilcoxon rank-sum test was used for the analysis of significant differences between different comparison groups. ^#P < 0.1, ^*P < 0.05, ^**P < 0.01. Plots of principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) based on the OTU level in different comparison groups: females vs. males (B), HTN group vs. control group in females (D) and males (F), respectively. Each square/circle indicates one sample. The distance between samples represents the GM similarity or differences in the samples, and the PCoA analysis was conducted with unweighted UniFrac method