Dr. John R. Lee, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of Nephrology and Hypertension, and colleagues have published a paper in Gut Microbes on gut commensal microbiota and a decreased risk for Enterobacteriaceae bacteriuria and urinary tract infection (UTI). In this paper, which reflected further analysis stemming from their previous paper published in Nature Communications (December 2019), 168 kidney transplant recipients, who provided 510 fecal specimens, were evaluated.
“We found that the combined gut abundance of two commensal taxa, Faecalibacterium and Romboutsia, was inversely proportional to the gut abundance of Enterobacteriaceae, which are associated with common gram negative bacterial infections,” explains Dr. Lee. “Using a Cox Regression model, we discovered that the combined gut abundance of Faecalibacterium and Romboutsia was associated with less development of Enterobacteriaceae bacteriuria and urinary tract infection. Our data suggest that having a high abundance of gut commensal bacterial taxa can be associated with less development of the most common UTI and that gut microbial interventions could decrease risk for recurrent UTIs.”
Dr. Lee thanks the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for their support of this work through K23 AI 124464. He also thanks Dr. Manikkam Suthanthiran, Chief of Nephrology and Hypertension, who provided the support and infrastructure to conduct the study in the division, and Dr. Eric Pamer, Director of the Duchossois Family Institute, who provided support for the microbiome sequencing.