Abstract
A pathogenic role of nitric oxide has beensuggested in acute and chronic intestinal inflammation.We took the opportunity offered by studies in patientswith excluded colon, which represents a model of chronic intestinal inflammation with noexogenous nitrite or nitrate supply, to evaluate thequantity and the quality of nitrate reducers indiversion colitis. Thirty patients (17 men, 13 women,mean age 45 years) having an excluded colonfor variousreasons were sampled by rectal swabs and compared to 30healthy controls (11 men, 19 women, mean age 28 years).The percentage of nitrate-reducers among the total count of subcultured bacteria was 46± 41% (mean ± SD) in patients withdiversion colitis as compared to 19 ± 24% inhealthy controls. This difference was significant (P< 0.05) despite great heterogeneity in individual values. In patientswith diversion colitis, 75/254 (29.5%) differentisolated bacterial strains were nitrate-reducers ascompared to 61/294 (21%) (P < 0.05) in controls.Among the 75 nitrate-reducing strains isolated frompatients with diversion colitis, 55 were aerobes.Pseudomonas species were only encountered in thispopulation. The predominant group was enterobacteriawith a high isolation rate of species belonging tothe genera Proteus, Providencia, and Morganella . Inhealthy controls nitrate-reducing anaerobes were nearlyas frequent as aerobes. The most frequent species was Eubacterium lentum, followed by Clostridiumperfringens. It could be suggested that nitric oxidesynthase might produce a bacterial substrate increasingthe growth of bacteria with a high pathogenic potential, creating conditions for chronicinflammation and infection in patients with excludedcolon.
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Neut, C., Guillemot, F. & Colombel, J.F. Nitrate-Reducing Bacteria in Diversion Colitis (A Clue to Inflammation?). Dig Dis Sci 42, 2577–2580 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018885217154
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018885217154