#bacteriotherapy

Feces transplantation can be the solution for those who have abdominal complaints. Some abdominal complaints are just temporarily while others can occur for a longer period of time. People with abdominal complaints on a regular basis can think of researching their feces. It could be caused by a disease named Clostridium Difficile. This disease is quite common. About 15 out of 10.000 patients are diagnosed with this disease. It could result in having some minor problems, but it can also turn out to have big problems. Of all the patients having the disease, about 5% the infection returns often. To counteract this issue, these patients need to do a  fecal bacteriotherapy. It is the only effective treatment. In the past few years the intestinal fecal transportation has been done at the average of three to four times a month in the Netherlands. It is predicted that this number will increase rapidly not only in the Netherlands, but in the whole world. LUMC prof. Ed Kuijper of the Department of Medical Microbiology: "The effectiveness of the Fecal Bacteriotherapy in patients with Clostridium difficile infection was established in 2013. Since then, the treatment is included in national and international guidelines. "

Collecting feces protocol

The feces that the doctors use needs to be treated with care following certain rules. The NDFB (Nederlandse Donor Feces Bank) provided medical instances in the Netherlands with accessible donor feces. The NDFB is collecting and controlling the feces according to a guideline. The feces are being registered and arrange the transportation across the country. Liz Terveer, clinical microbiologist in education and coordinator of the feces bank: "We work with standardized protocols from screening the donor, reprocessing the feces to the transportation to the hospitals. The storage at -80 ⁰C and the issuance of the stool suspension. This way the doctor that receives the feces, can safely insert directly into the duodenum of the patient. Besides, the NDFB are also offering training to doctors who perform the fecal Bacteriotherapy. " Dr. Josbert Keller and Ed Kuijper took the initiative for establishing the NDFB. They worked together with the department Biobanking of the LUMC.

Donate your feces

Can 50-year-old Salmonella Treat Cancer?

Salmonella has a distinct nature that makes bacteria penetrate through cell boundaries and multiply within its host. Currently, scientists have developed a non-toxic strain of Salmonella to penetrate and aim at cancer cells. Outcomes from this research might lead to promising new treatments that may effectively target and manage the spread of cancer. The Centers for Disease Control stated that 48…

This morning, I was doing a lazy ramble through my favourite blogs and found a post by Carl Zimmer on 'Bugs as Drugs' - primarily on probiotics. And I just came to realise that there is a very interesting tendency these years of using bugs as drugs in a variety of fields. We are all very much aware of the worries about the increase in antibiotic resistance in bacterial and other pathogens. Moreover, it appears that sometimes antibiotic treatment leads to imbalance in the intestinal microbiota (dysbiosis); a well-known example is intractable Clostridium difficile infections which can potentially lead to pseudomembranous colitis.

C. difficile infection can lead to pseudomembranous colitis

Earlier this year, an article appeared in the renowned The New England Journal of Medicine on a randomised, controlled treatment study on duodenal infusion of donor faeces for recurrent C. difficile. The researchers found that the infusion of donor faeces was significantly more effective for the treatment of recurrent C. difficile infection than the use of vancomycin, the drug usually recommended in this situation. In fact 15/16 patients had resolution of C. difficile-associated diarrhoea upon first or second infusion; however, it might be worthwhile 'shopping around' for the right donor. And so, how are these faecal transplants developed and administered? Well, it appears that donors are volunteers who have been through a selection process based on a questionnaire on risk factors of infectious diseases. Then donor faeces is screened for parasites (including Blastocystis and Dientamoeba - yes, it warms my heart to see this so explicitly spelled out in the paper... but I wonder which methods were used - it doesn't say!) and enteropathogenic bacteria. Moreover, blood samples from donors are screened for e.g. HIV, hepatitis and antibodies against e.g. Entamoeba histolytica and Strongyloides. Next, a donor pool is created with repeated screening every 4 months. On the day of infusion, faeces is collected by the donor and immediately brought to the hospital, where it is diluted with 500 mL of sterile saline. The solution is stirred, and the supernatant strained and poured in a sterile bottle. Within 6 h after collection of the faecal sample by the donor, the solution is infused through a nasoduodenal tube (2 to 3 mintues per 50 mL). Patients are subsequently monitored for 2 h. Apparently, this is how it works! Interestingly, it appears that ways of biologically controlling and manipulating infectious and non-infectious diseases circumventing the use of antibiotics are navigable and on the rise: I have previously blogged on the hygiene hypothesis, on dirtying up our diets, and on helminth therapy of colitis, and I'm currently involved in a study on Trichuris suis ova treatment of a patient with psoriasis, a chronic inflammatory skin disease; a study aiming to determine whether helminth therapy remedies flare-ups. Exploitation of organisms to combat diseases may in the future include virotherapy of parasites. There is a paper out just now in Trends in Microbiology elaborating on the hypothesis that it might be possible to manipulate viruses to control certain parasites. A number of viruses are already known to infect parasites pathogenic to humans (e.g Giardia, Cryptosporidium, Trichomonas, Acanthamoeba and Leishmania) and plants (e.g. Phytophthora). So far, viruses have mainly been explored as a means of controlling bacteria by using bacteriophages, and the authors encourage studies into investigation of viruses and virus-like particles in parasites (Importantly, another angle to this is the possibility of viruses inducing differential gene expression among infected and non-infected parasites... something that should also be explored and not ignored). And... I guess that everyone is familiar with the use of maggots for wound healing? Don't worry, I'll save pics for later... Anyway, the use of bugs as drugs is certainly an interesting field that challenges our current inclination to seeing bugs as something that should always be avoided and that may potentially remedy a variety of diseases along with presenting solutions to the problem of drug resistance or adverse drug reactions. Suggested reading: Hyman P, Atterbury R, & Barrow P (2013). Fleas and smaller fleas: virotherapy for parasite infections. Trends in Microbiology PMID: 23540830

I promised to include some more stuff from some of the many recent publications in Science and Science Translational Medicine on the intestinal microbiome and its potential role in health and disease, and I've chosen two papers that could have broad public interest; for those who need an introduction to the microbiome, please go here (Wikipedia entry). Because the microbiome has been more or less exclusively synonymous with the "bacteriome" it's very refreshing to discover a paper on fungal diversity in the gut. Like Blastocystis, and other single-celled parasites, intestinal fungi are also micro-eukaryotes, and we are continuously searching for the role of micro-eukaryotes in health and disease. In general, very little is known about fungi in the intestine, and most clinicians, even mycologists, hardly bother about the fungi that may be present in our intestine, - I think I can say that without offending anyone! Maybe one of the most interesting things in a clinical respect is the fact that antibodies against the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae (see below) is a common finding in patients with Crohn's Disease, but relatively uncommon in patients with ulcerative colitis and healthy individuals. Now, Iliev et al. (2012) start out by confirming the fact that fungi are indeed common commensals and thus a part of our normal intestinal flora. They then showed that colitis chemically induced in mice led to circulating antibodies against S. cerevisiae, which suggested that fungal antigens commonly found in the gut might be responsible for the induction of these antifungal antibodies during colitis. The innate immune receptor Dectin-1 appears to have a key role in fungal recognition and combating. Therefore the authors wanted to further explore the role of this receptor by studying mice with and without Dectin-1. They found that Dectin-1 deficiency led to increased susceptibility to chemically induced colitis, including weight loss, tissue destruction and cell infiltration by inflammatory cells, etc. Moreoever, evidence was found of fungal invasion of inflamed tissue in the Dectin-1 knockout mice and taken together, their data suggest that Dectin-1 deficiency leads to altered immunity to commensal gut fungi. To cut a long story short, results from these experiments in mice led the investigators to search for mutations in CLEC1A (the human Dectin-1 gene) in patients with ulcerative colitis, and they found that mutations were significantly more common in patients with severe ulcerative colitis (patients requiring colectomy) than in those with a less aggressive disease progression. This suggests that not only bacteria but also intestinal fungi interact with the intestinal immune system and may thereby influence health and disease. If this can be confirmed by others, this is an example of how biomarkers can predict the disposition towards/progression of disease and the results may have profound consequences for diagnostic strategies (e.g. screening for mutations in the Dectin-1 gene) and therapeutic management of patients with severe ulcerative colitis. Maybe it would have been interesting to know about such mutations in patients with Crohn's Disease as well... Next, the investigators took to identifying what types of fungi were actually present in the colon of these mice. What may be a little bit controversial is the fact that the authors - by amplification and deep sequencing of  ITS1-2 (genetic marker commonly used to identify and taxonomically group fungi) - appear to have found not only species representing a staggering 50 well-annotated fungal genera in the mouse microbiome, but an additional 100 "novel and/or un-annotated fungi" as well - this does sound like a lot, but somehow the reader is calmed down a bit, when the authors later tell us that 97.3% of all fungi detected in the mouse faeces belonged to only 10 species, with 65.2% of the fungal sequences belonging to Candida tropicalis. So, whether the 100 novel fungi are indeed fungi colonising the intestinal tract is unknown, but they may very well represent fungi "on transit", so to say, acquired from food, drink or environment maybe... we know that fungi are ubiquitous - we inhale fungi every day for instance, and when deep sequencing is applied, it may be possible to trace even fungi only present in very small quantities; also ITS-2 analysis does not tell us whether the sequences are from "intact/live" (i.e. colonising) fungi or from degraded fungi (i.e. ingested); a classic example is Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Brewer's or Baker's yeast), which we may often acquire from food and drink, but which may also colonise (settle and proliferate) our intestines. Contamination of the faecal samples from fungi present in the environment and during processing is also a possibility (one of the reasons why PCR-based diagnostics for fungal infections is a tricky task...). Well so, all of these new species/genera may not necessarily represent the "mouse mycobiome". However, the authors found only few of the fungi in the food that was fed to the mice, so this still may remain a bit of a mystery... it would have been interesting to know whether the fungi detected were yeasts or molds, for instance, and very little information can be extracted from the supplementary material (phylogenetic analysis) accompanying the paper. Anyway, it's all very stimulating and further studies will assist in exploring fungal diversity and, hopefully, the diversity of micro-eukaryotes in general.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is used in food and drink, but may also colonise our guts.

The next paper is one of many recent papers heralding the implementation of microbiome-based therapies in future personalised and precision medicine, possibly relevant to diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, obesity and diabetes. Microbiome manipulation, so to say, is key to this concept and includes controlled diet, pre- and probiotic interventions, bariatric surgery (e.g. gastric bypass), faecal transplants (see my recent blog post on feacal bacteriotherapy), helminth therapy (yes!) or ecological engineering. Probiotics are live microorganisms that, when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host, and these may be known to many as lactobacilli or bifidobacteria (or simply "yoghurt"!) that protect us against harmful bacteria by inhibiting their growth and by helping reduce cholesterol levels, synthesise vitamins and sustain immune responses. Prebiotics are non-digestible dietary sugar molecules (oligosaccharides) that can enhance the activity of for instance lactobacilli and bifidobacteria. While the potential benefits of pre- and probitics have been known for many years, it is only with current available technology that we are starting to get a mechanistic understanding of their impact on our bodies. The article picks up on host-gut microbiota metabolic interactions and the so-called "host-microbe metabolic axes", which include pathways and interactions responsible for gut permeability, formation of blood vessels (angiogenesis) in the gut mucosa, ion transports, sulfation ability of xenobiotics, and many other things; sulfation ability is a key component in metabolising of drugs, for instance. Differences in our individual abilities to sulfate certain compounds give us at least one explanation as to why different people may respond differently two drugs treatment (see previous posts), and our ability to metabolise a common drug such as acetaminophen (paracetamol) can apparently be predicted form our preinterventional excretion of the microbial co-metabolite 4-cresyl sulfate; other gut microbial contributions that can alter the absorption, metabolism, and safety of drugs have been demonstrated recently.

Gastric bypass (Roux-en-Y) is a surgical procedure carried out to delay and reduce the absorption of calories and includes bypassing a large part of the stomach and a part of the small intestine by a procedure known as "stapling". Roux-en-Y appears to be associated with major and stable changes in the microbiota and in many microbially generated compounds, all of which are key components in the host-microbe metabolic axes. "This suggests that the microbiota is an essential part of the "gearbox" that connects the physical effects of bariatric surgery to the resulting beneficial effects." Gut ecology changes with age, and current investigations seek to define the rationale of and potential for manipulating the microbiome of older people, for instance with pre- and probiotics, to secure higher microbiome diversity (high microbiome diversity appears to be beneficial) and resilience to antibiotics-induced changes in gut flora. For those of you who nearly choked on "helminth therapy" - I may put up a post in the future on how helminths (and maybe other intestinal eukaryotes such as amoebae?) apparently plays a role in the presentation and regulation of diseases such as asthma and inflammatory bowel diseases... The cells of our intestinal microbiome outnumber our own body cells by 10 to 1. Within the next decade or so we will be able to extract a lot of information about how the bacteria and other "bugs" in our guts influence and contribute to health and disease. Importantly, we may have to realise now more than ever that "germs and bugs" and their actions and interactions can hold the key to a healthy life in ways that we wouldn't think were possible only a few years ago. This means that we should acknowledge that some bacteria and parasites may be a sign of a healthy intestinal environment / a healthy gut function, and that consumption of drugs such as antibiotics may produce shifts in our microbiota that may not necessarily be beneficial. References:

Iliev ID, Funari VA, Taylor KD, Nguyen Q, Reyes CN, Strom SP, Brown J, Becker CA, Fleshner PR, Dubinsky M, Rotter JI, Wang HL, McGovern DP, Brown GD, & Underhill DM (2012). Interactions between commensal fungi and the C-type lectin receptor Dectin-1 influence colitis. Science (New York, N.Y.), 336 (6086), 1314-7 PMID: 22674328  

For those of you who read my most recent blog post and who went on to read Carl Zimmer's article in The New York Times about gut flora transplantation on a woman suffering from chronic Clostridium difficile diarrhoea: The concept of faecal bacteriotherpy is maybe not that new. Allegedly, it dates back to Pliny the Elder and others, who prescribed orally ingested faeces to cure maladies! Stools were, however, incinerated first, and only the ashes ingested.

Pliny the Elder and others with him allegedly recommended  ingesting the ashes of faeces to cure disease.

In less ancient times - in 1989 to be more preciese - Tvede and Rask-Madsen from Copenhagen, Denmark (Statens Serum Institut and The Danish State Hospital) reported on bacteriotherapy for chronic relapsing C. difficile diarrhoea in six patients. They hypothesised that absence of Bacteroides results in chronic relapsing C. difficile diarrhoea, and that its presence may prevent colonisation by C. difficile. In the current issue of Microbe Magazine, Young and Aronoff describe some of the mechanisms that may be involved in our indigenous gut flora's ability to prevent the colonisation of potentially pathogenic bacteria such as C. difficile. These include: (1) occupying space (physically preventing contact by newly arrived microbes with the host), (2) directly impairing the growth or germination of C. diffıcile, (3) withholding nutrients or germinants from C. diffıcile, and (4) shaping the host adaptive and innate immune responses.

Hence, the concept of dysbiosis and the ideas of manipulating the gut flora in order to "restore order" have been going on for a long time. Metagenomics, however, will assist us in exploring exactly what is happening in much more detail and in a much broader and standardised context than previously possible. We will be able to predict shifts in the structure, function and interaction of microbial communities - hopefully including micro-eukaryotes such as fungi (the "mycobiome") and common protists such as Blastocystis and Dientamoeba (maybe we can call it the "protistome"?), - and any influence of diet, pro- and antibiotics. And fortunately, the focus on metagenomics continues: While CMI just launched a themed issue on metagenomics advances (see previous blog post), even Science and Science Translational Medicine now dedicated an entire joint issue to "The Gut Microbiota", and I hope to be able to address one or two of these papers soon. Until then, here's a bit of suggested reading:

Tvede, M., & Rask-Madsen, J. (1989). Bacteriotherapy for chronic relapsing Clostridium difficile diarrhoea in six patients The Lancet, 333 (8648), 1156-1160 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(89)92749-9 Young and Aronoff (2012). Clostridium difficile linked to disrupted gut microbiota. Microbe Magazine (ASM): http://goo.gl/FIZmC 

Bacteriotherapy /