THURSDAY, July 18, 2024 (HealthDay News) — For solid organ transplant recipients, gut dysbiosis is associated with all-cause and cause-specific mortality, according to a study published online July 2 in Gut.

J. Casper Swarte, from the University Medical Centre in Groningen, Netherlands, and colleagues analyzed 1,337 metagenomes derived from fecal samples of 766 kidney, 334 liver, 170 lung, and 67 heart transplant recipients from the TransplantLines Biobank and Cohort. An additional 8,208 metagenomes from the general population of the same geographical area were included to analyze gut dysbiosis. The association between multiple indicators of gut dysbiosis, including individual species abundances, and all-cause and cause-specific mortality was examined using multivariable Cox regression and a machine learning algorithm.

The researchers identified two patterns representing microbiome community variation that were associated with all-cause and cause-specific mortality. There was an association between the gut microbiome distance between each transplantation recipient to the average of the general population with all-cause mortality and death from infection, malignancy, and cardiovascular disease. Twenty-three bacterial species that were associated with all-cause mortality were identified; a balance consisting of 19 of 23 species that were associated with all-cause mortality was identified by applying a machine learning algorithm.

“Our results support emerging evidence showing that gut dysbiosis is associated with long-term survival, indicating that gut-microbiome targeting therapies might improve patient outcomes although causal links should be identified first,” the authors write.

The TransplantLines Biobank and Cohort study received funding from Astellas BV and Chiesi Pharmaceuticals BV.

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