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Our bodies are full of bacteria, and when we get sick, those microbial populations change. Hospitals monitor patients’ bloodwork and vitals, so why not track the makeup of their microbiomes too? Paul Wischmeyer and his collaborators are conducting research that could allow them to do just that, opening the door for microbiome diagnostic indicators and probiotic measures to restore patients’ normal bacterial signatures. The first publication of data from the project appeared this week in the journal mSphere. We asked him about the research, and what he’s learned so far.
Our hypothesis was that critical illness would lead to a loss of diversity of the microbiome and that this loss of diversity would correlate with adverse outcomes, or perhaps even predict them. That was really the goal of the project: to use the microbiome diagnostically to identify patients who are at risk for bad outcomes, then ultimately guide us in replacing the healthy bacterial population to drive recovery.
Our initial results have really supported that hypothesis. Patients lose significant, significant amounts of their normal flora, the families of bacterial species that make up a healthy gut or oropharynx. They’re largely replaced by pathogens or proteobacteria; like staph, proteus, and other bacteria we associate with GI-associated bacterial translocation. Under normal circumstances, the human gut is made up of many different species. The most abundant bacterial family might make up 25 or 35 percent, and there are many others present. Our patients often start out with that normal appearance, but within just a few days we saw that in some patients 95 percent of bacteria in the gut were one taxa, and often this was a pathogen that dominated. One bacterial taxa overwhelms the rest, or grows because the others have been wiped out by antibiotics or other interventions. The lack of diversity that can occur is severe.
Our initial results have really supported that hypothesis. Patients lose significant, significant amounts of their normal flora, the families of bacterial species that make up a healthy gut or oropharynx. They’re largely replaced by pathogens or proteobacteria; like staph, proteus, and other bacteria we associate with GI-associated bacterial translocation. Under normal circumstances, the human gut is made up of many different species. The most abundant bacterial family might make up 25 or 35 percent, and there are many others present. Our patients often start out with that normal appearance, but within just a few days we saw that in some patients 95 percent of bacteria in the gut were one taxa, and often this was a pathogen that dominated. One bacterial taxa overwhelms the rest, or grows because the others have been wiped out by antibiotics or other interventions. The lack of diversity that can occur is severe.