Numerous
human diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes and autism
spectrum disorders have been linked to abnormal gut microbial communities, or
microbiomes, but an open question is whether these altered microbiomes are
drivers of disease.
A
new study at the University of Oregon, led by postdoctoral fellow Annah Rolig,
took aim at that question with experiments in zebrafish to dissect whether changes
in the abundance of certain gut bacteria can cause intestinal inflammation.
The
researchers successfully tracked how gut bacterial abundances influenced
inflammation. Fish with intestinal inflammation had a larger abundance of a
subset of bacteria that appeared to be pro-inflammatory, which they confirmed
by dosing the fish with one of these bacteria and finding that it increased the
severity of disease symptoms.
They
also found a subset of bacteria that was depleted in the inflamed intestines,
but present in the mutant fish that remained disease-free. Dosing the fish with
a strain of these depleted bacteria ameliorated the disease. Finally, they
showed that they could cure the inflammation by transplanting gut neurons from
healthy fish into the diseased fish.
These
studies demonstrate that inflammatory intestinal pathologies, such as
Hirschsprung-associated enterocolitis or inflammatory bowel disease, can be
explained as an overgrowth of certain pro-inflammatory groups of bacteria or a
loss of anti-inflammatory bacteria, said Judith Eisen, a professor of biology
and an expert on gut neurons in zebrafish.
Identifying
the bacteria that drive and protect against disease is the first step toward
developing microbial interventions and therapies.
For
further details see:
Posted by Dr. Tim Sandle
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