Microbiota in Health and Disease—Potential Clinical Applications

Abstract

Within the last two decades tremendous efforts in biomedicine have been undertaken to understand the interplay of commensal bacteria living in and on our human body with our own human physiology. It became clear that (1) a high diversity especially of the microbial communities in the gut are important to preserve health and that (2) certain bacteria via nutrition-microbe-host metabolic axes are beneficially affecting various functions of the host, including metabolic control, energy balance and immune function. While a large set of evidence indicate a special role for small chain fatty acids (SCFA) in that context, recently also metabolites of amino acids (e.g., tryptophan and arginine) moved into scientific attention. Of interest, microbiome alterations are not only important in nutrition associated diseases like obesity and diabetes, but also in many chronic inflammatory, oncological and neurological abnormalities. From a clinician’s point of view, it should be mentioned, that the microbiome is not only interesting to develop novel therapies, but also as a modifiable factor to improve efficiency of modern pharmaceutics, e.g., immune-therapeutics in oncology. However, so far, most data rely on animal experiments or human association studies, whereas controlled clinical intervention studies are spare. Hence, the translation of the knowledge of the last decades into clinical routine will be the challenge of microbiome based biomedical research for the next years. This review aims to provide examples for future clinical applications in various entities and to suggest bacterial species and/or microbial effector molecules as potential targets for intervention studies.

The Nutrition-Microbiota-Physical Activity Triad: An Inspiring New Concept for Health and Sports Performance

“…The intestinal microbiota contribution to our health is becoming increasingly well known. Besides its homeostatic role, changes in the microbiota composition, called dysbiosis, are implicated in the establishment and chronicity of various pathologies, such as chronic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), irritable bowel syndrome, colorectal cancer, metabolic diseases (type 2 diabetes, obesity), depression, and cardiovascular diseases [ 18 ] ( Figure 1 ). Dysbiosis, i.e., the qualitative and/or functional alteration of the intestinal microbiota, can contribute to the etiology of some diseases, especially those in which autoimmune or inflammatory mechanisms are implicated.…”

Seminal Microbiota of Idiopathic Infertile Patients and Its Relationship With Sperm DNA Integrity

“…Recent studies focused on different human diseases support the essential role of the microbiome in health-disease status ( Shreiner et al, 2015 ; Young, 2017 ; Giles and Couper, 2020 ). The development of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) techniques has allowed a deeper analysis of the microbiomes colonizing humans ( Malla et al, 2019 ) and, for this reason, the number of studies analyzing the microbiomes’ composition and relation to health and diseases has grown exponentially over the last decade ( Laudes et al, 2021 ). Similarly, seminal microbiota dysbiosis has recently been proposed as a potential cause of male infertility ( Altmäe et al, 2019 ; Koedooder et al, 2019 ; Lundy et al, 2020 ; Tomaiuolo et al, 2020 ; Farahani et al, 2021 ).…”

Features of assessing the intestinal barrier permeability in chronic kidney disease

“…В последние несколько лет изучение состава и функций микробиоты кишечника получили значительное распространение при широком круге заболеваний, причем не только кишечных, но и системных [61]. Долгое время основным методом исследования кишечной микробиоты были культуральные методы, которые идентифицировали только культивируемые микроорганизмы и не раскрывали всего разнообразия чрезвычайно сложного микробного сообщества.…”