Comparison of microbial communities and the profile of sulfate-reducing bacteria in patients with ulcerative colitis and their association with bowel diseases: a pilot study
Authors:Ivan Kushkevych1, Kristýna Martínková1, Lenka Mráková1, Francesco Giudici2, Simone Baldi2, David Novak3, Márió Gajdács4, Monika Vítězová1, Dani Dordevic5, Amedeo Amedei2 and Simon K.-M. R. Rittmann6
doi: 10.15698/mic2024.03.817
Volume 11, pp. 79 to 89, published 14/03/2024.
1 Department of Experimental Biology, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, 62500 Brno, Czech Republic.
2 Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine, University of Florence, 50134 Florence, Italy.
3 Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, 62500 Brno, Czech Republic.
4 Department of Oral Biology and Experimental Dental Research, Faculty of Dentistry, University of Szeged, 6720 Szeged, Hungary.
5 Department of Plant Origin Food Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Hygiene and Ecology, University of Veterinary Sciences Brno, Palackého tř. 1946/1, 612 42 Brno, Czech Republic.
6 Department of Functional and Evolutionary Ecology, Archaea Physiology & Biotechnology Group, Universität Wien, 1030 Wien, Austria.
Keywords:
gut microbiota, ulcerative colitis, gut dysbiosis, sulfate-reducing bacteria, inflammatory bowel disease, 16S rRNA gene sequencing.
Corresponding Author(s):
Conflict of interest statement:
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interests.
Please cite this article as:
Ivan Kushkevych, Kristýna Martínková, Lenka Mráková, Francesco Giudici, Simone Baldi, David Novak, Márió Gajdács, Monika Vítězová, Dani Dordevic, Amedeo Amedei and Simon K.-M. R. Rittmann (2024). Comparison of microbial communities and the profile of sulfate-reducing bacteria in patients with ul-cerative colitis and their association with bowel diseases: a pilot study. Microbial Cell 11: 79-89. doi: 10.15698/mic2024.03.817
© 2024 Kushkevych et al. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.
Abstract:
Considerable evidence has accumulated regarding the molecular relationship between gut microbiota (GM) composition and the onset (clinical presentation and prognosis of ulcerative colitis (UC)). In addition, it is well documented that short-chain fatty acid (SCFA)-producing bacteria may play a fundamental role in maintaining an anti-inflammatory intestinal homeostasis, but sulfate- and sulfite reducing bacteria may be responsible for the production of toxic metabolites, such as hydrogen sulfide and acetate. Hence, the present study aimed to assess the GM composition – focusing on sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) – in patients with severe, severe-active and moderate UC. Each one of the six enrolled patients provided two stool samples in the following way: one sample was cultivated in a modified SRB-medium before 16S rRNA sequencing and the other was not cultivated. Comparative phylogenetic analysis was conducted on each sample. Percentage of detected gut microbial genera showed considerable variation based on the patients’ disease severity and cultivation in the SRB medium. In detail, samples without cultivation from patients with moderate UC showed a high abundance of the genera Bacteroides, Bifidobacterium and Ruminococcus, but after SRB cultivation, the dominant genera were Bacteroides, Klebsiella and Bilophila. On the other hand, before SRB cultivation, the main represented genera in patients with severe UC were Escherichia-Shigella, Proteus, Methanothermobacter and Methanobacterium. However, after incubation in the SRB medium Bacteroides, Proteus, Alistipes and Lachnoclostridium were predominant. Information regarding GM compositional changes in UC patients may aid the development of novel therapeutic strategies (e.g., probiotic preparations containing specific bacterial strains) to counteract the mechanisms of virulence of harmful bacteria and the subsequent inflammatory response that is closely related to the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel diseases.