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Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction-based Analyses of Murine Intestinal Microbiota After Oral Antibiotic Treatment
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Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction-based Analyses of Murine Intestinal Microbiota After Oral Antibiotic Treatment

Published on: November 17, 2018

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Antibiotics, pediatric dysbiosis, and disease

Pajau Vangay1, Tonya Ward2, Jeffrey S Gerber3

  • 1Biomedical Informatics and Computational Biology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA.

Cell Host & Microbe
|May 15, 2015
PubMed

Insights

Early antibiotic use in children can disrupt the gut microbiome, leading to dysbiosis. Further research is needed to understand these effects and inform guidelines for infant antibiotic prescriptions.

Area of Science:

  • Microbiology
  • Pediatrics
  • Epidemiology

Background:

  • Antibiotics are frequently prescribed for children, with emerging evidence linking early exposure to adult disease phenotypes.
  • Infant antibiotic use disrupts the gut microbiota, causing dysbiosis, a complex area of study due to the developing infant gut.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To synthesize current knowledge on the link between antibiotics, dysbiosis, and disease in children.
  • To propose a framework for investigating antibiotic-induced dysbiosis in pediatric populations.

Main Methods:

  • Literature synthesis of existing research on antibiotic use, gut microbiome, and disease development.
  • Proposal of a research framework focusing on four key types of dysbiosis.

Main Results:

  • Early antibiotic exposure is associated with gut dysbiosis in infants.
  • Four critical types of dysbiosis to study include loss of keystone taxa, reduced diversity, altered metabolic capacity, and pathogen blooms.

Conclusions:

  • A comprehensive framework is proposed for studying antibiotic-related dysbiosis in children.
  • Establishing large, diverse infant cohorts is crucial for defining healthy microbiome development and guiding future diagnostic and therapeutic strategies.
  • Evidence-based recommendations for infant antibiotic use are needed.

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