"Bacterial Consortium": A Potential Evolution of Fecal Microbiota Transplantation for the Treatment of Infection

Overview

Journal Biomed Res Int

Publisher Wiley

Specialties Biomedical Engineering
Biotechnology
General Medicine

Date 2022 Aug 18

PMID 35978650

Authors

Gianluca Quaranta

Gianluca Ianiro

Flavio De Maio

Alessandra Guarnaccia

Giovanni Fancello

Chiara Agrillo

Federica Iannarelli

Stefano Bibbo

Amedeo Amedei

Maurizio Sanguinetti

Giovanni Cammarota

Luca Masucci

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) consists of infusion of feces from a donor to a recipient patient in order to restore the resident microbial population. FMT has shown to be a valid clinical option for infections (CDI). However, this approach shows several criticalities, such as the recruiting and screening of voluntary donors. Our aim was to evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of a synthetic bacterial suspension defined "Bacterial Consortium" (BC) infused in the colon of CDI patients. The suspension was composed by 13 microbial species isolated by culturomics protocols from healthy donors' feces. The efficacy of the treatment was assessed both clinically and by metagenomics typing. Fecal samples of the recipient patients were collected before and after infusion. DNA samples obtained from feces at different time points (preinfusion, 7, 15, 30, and 90 days after infusion) were analyzed by next-generation sequencing. Before infusion, patient 1 showed an intestinal microbiota dominated by the phylum . Seven days after the infusion, decreased, followed by an implementation of and . Patient 2, before infusion, showed a strong abundance of and a significant deficiency of and . Seven days after infusion, strongly decreased, while and increased. Metagenomics data revealed an "awakening" by microbial species absent or low concentrated at time T0 and present after the infusion. In conclusion, the infusion of selected bacteria would act as a trigger factor for "bacterial repopulation" representing an innovative treatment in patients with infections.

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