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Study on Effects of Probiotics on Gut Microbiome and Clinical Course in Patients with Critical Care Illnesses

  • Human Microbiome
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Abstract

Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is a nosocomial infection contracted by ventilator patients in which bacteria colonize the upper digestive tract and contaminated secretions are released into the lower airway. This nosocomial infection increases the morbidity and mortality of the patients as well as the cost of treatment. Probiotic formulations have recently been proposed to prevent the colonization of these pathogenic bacteria. In this prospective observational study, we aimed to investigate the effects of probiotics on gut microbiota and their relation to clinical outcomes in mechanically ventilated patients. For this study, 35 patients were recruited (22 probiotic-treated and 13 without probiotic treatment) from a cohort of 169 patients. Patients in the probiotic group were given a dose of 6 capsules of a commercially available probiotic (VSL#3®:112.5 billion CFU/cap) in three divided doses for 10 days. Sampling was carried out after each dose to monitor the temporal change in the gut microbiota composition. To profile the microbiota, we used a 16S rRNA metagenomic approach, and differences among the groups were computed using multivariate statistical analyses. Differences in gut microbial diversity (Bray Curtis and Jaccard distance, p-value > 0.05) between the probiotic-treated group and the control group were not observed. Furthermore, treatment with probiotics resulted in the enrichment of Lactobacillus and Streptococcus in the gut microbiota of the probiotic-treated groups. Our results demonstrated that probiotics might lead to favorable alterations in gut microbiome characteristics. Future studies should focus on the appropriate dosages and frequency of probiotics, which can lead to improved clinical outcomes.

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Data Availability

Metadata and 16S rRNA gene sequences are submitted to the Sequence read archive (SRA) (NCBI) database https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/. The submission IDs of the sequences are SUB11977043 (BioProject ID PRJNA874880) and SUB11991923 (PRJNA875248). Sequences will be available to the public immediately after acceptance of the article.

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Funding

AR received funding support from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Govt. of India (Grant number 5/9/1208/2019-Nut, Dt. 16.09.2019). BD acknowledges Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India (No. BT/PR30159/MED/15/188/2018) for financial support.

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Author notes

  1. Kanukuntla Saikrishna, Daizee Talukdar, Santanu Das and Bhabatosh Das contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, 110029, India

    Kanukuntla Saikrishna, Subhradip Karmakar, Naveet Wig & Animesh Ray

  2. Functional Genomics Laboratory, Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, Faridabad, Haryana, 121001, India

    Daizee Talukdar, Santanu Das, Susmita Bakshi, Priyanka Chakravarti, Pradipta Jana & Bhabatosh Das

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  1. Kanukuntla Saikrishna
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Correspondence to Bhabatosh Das.

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Saikrishna, K., Talukdar, D., Das, S. et al. Study on Effects of Probiotics on Gut Microbiome and Clinical Course in Patients with Critical Care Illnesses. Microb Ecol 86, 1814–1828 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-023-02224-8

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