Gut microbiota response to antibiotics is personalized and depends on baseline microbiota

Armin Rashidi, Maryam Ebadi, Tauseef Ur Rehman, Heba Elhusseini, Harika Nalluri, Thomas Kaiser, Shernan G. Holtan, Alexander Khoruts, Daniel J. Weisdorf, Christopher Staley

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

37 Scopus citations

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The magnitude of microbiota perturbations after exposure to antibiotics varies among individuals. It has been suggested that the composition of pre-treatment microbiota underpins personalized responses to antibiotics. However, this hypothesis has not been directly tested in humans. In this high-throughput amplicon study, we analyzed 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences of 260 stool samples collected twice weekly from 39 patients with acute leukemia during their ~ 4 weeks of hospitalization for chemotherapy while they received multiple antibiotics.

RESULTS: Despite heavy and sustained antibiotic pressure, microbial communities in samples from the same patient remained more similar to one another than to those from other patients. Principal component mixed effect regression using microbiota and granular antibiotic exposure data showed that microbiota departures from baseline depend on the composition of the pre-treatment microbiota. Penalized generalized estimating equations identified 6 taxa within pre-treatment microbiota that predicted the extent of antibiotic-induced perturbations.

CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that specific species in pre-treatment microbiota determine personalized microbiota responses to antibiotics in humans. Thus, precision interventions targeting pre-treatment microbiota may prevent antibiotic-induced dysbiosis and its adverse clinical consequences. Video abstract.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number211
JournalMicrobiome
Volume9
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences grants KL2TR002492 and UL1TR002494. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).

Keywords

  • Antibiotics
  • Leukemia
  • Microbiota

PubMed: MeSH publication types

  • Journal Article
  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Video-Audio Media

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