Gut Bacteria May Drive Inflammation in Sepsis, ARDS Microbiome disruption in lungs may play key role in diseases

Bacteria that live in the gut also show up in the lungs of critically ill patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and in a mouse model of sepsis, suggesting a shared mechanism of pathogenesis for the two deadly diseases. Bacterial gene sequencing was used to identify the gut bacteria which are not detectable using conventional culture. Greater concentrations of gut bacteria in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid from patients with ARDS were associated with greater inflammation, wrote researcher Robert P. Dickson, MD, of the University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, and colleagues in the journal Nature Microbiology. No association was seen between Bacteroides OTU abundance and alveolar TNF-α concentration, suggesting that gut-lung bacterial translocation correlates with systemic, but not alveolar, inflammation. http://www.medpagetoday.com/CriticalCare/Sepsis/59217?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2016-07-21&eun=g721819d0r&pos=2