'Unhealthy' gut microbiome patterns are linked to a heightened risk of death after a solid organ transplant, finds research published online in the journal Gut . While these particular microbial patterns are associated with deaths from any cause, they are specifically associated with deaths from cancer and infection, regardless of the organ-;kidney, liver, heart, or lung-;transplanted, the findings show. The make-up of the gut microbiome is associated with various diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease and diabetes.
But few studies have had the data to analyse the association between the gut microbiome and long term survival, explain the researchers. And while a shift away from a normal pattern of microbes to an 'unhealthy' pattern, known as gut dysbiosis, has been linked to a heightened risk of death generally, it's not clear whether this might also be associated with overall survival in specific diseases, they add. To find out, they looked at the relationship between gut dysbiosis and death from all and specific causes in solid organ transplant recipients among whom the prevalence of gut dysbiosis is much higher than that of the general population.
This makes them an ideal group to study the associations between gut dysbiosis and long term survival, say the researchers. They analyzed the microbiome profiles from 1337 faecal samples provided by 766 kidney, 334 liver, 170 lung, and 67 heart, transplant recipients and compared those with the gut microbiome profiles of .