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Review
. 2017 Nov 2;8(6):607-615.
doi: 10.1080/19490976.2017.1349041. Epub 2017 Aug 3.

Gut microbiome in multiple sclerosis: The players involved and the roles they play

Shailesh K Shahi  1 , Samantha N Freedman  1 , Ashutosh K Mangalam  1
Affiliations
Review

Gut microbiome in multiple sclerosis: The players involved and the roles they play

Shailesh K Shahi et al. Gut Microbes. .

Abstract

The human gut contains trillions of bacteria (microbiome) that play a major role in maintaining a healthy state for the host. Perturbation of this healthy gut microbiome might be an important environmental factor in the pathogenesis of inflammatory autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS). Others and we have recently reported that MS patients have gut microbial dysbiosis (altered microbiota) with the depletion of some and enrichment of other bacteria. However, the significance of gut bacteria that show lower or higher abundance in MS is unclear. The majority of gut bacteria are associated with certain metabolic pathways, which in turn help in the maintenance of immune homeostasis of the host. Here we discuss recent MS microbiome studies and the possible mechanisms through which gut microbiome might contribute to the pathogenesis of MS.

Keywords: gut microbiome; host-microbe interaction; immune response; microbial metabolism; multiple sclerosis (MS); phytoestrogen; short chain fatty acids.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Role of the gut microbiota in health and disease.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Illustration of conserved, variable, hypervariable regions within the 16S rRNA gene and the various primer pairs used for metagenomic sequencing. Conserved regions are represented in blue, variable regions in gray, and hypervariable regions in red. Nine hypervariable regions are not distributed uniformly, as some hypervariable regions such as H3 and H9 are longer compared to H5 or H7. Primers are designed in a conserved region to get a PCR product spanning one (V4) or more hypervariable regions (e.g., V1-2 or V3-5). Single-end (Roche 454) or double-end (Illumina) sequencing of PCR product provides data for profiling of microbiota.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Erratum for

  • Addendum to: Chen J, Chia N, Kalari KR, Yao JZ, Novotna M, Soldan MM, et al. Multiple sclerosis patients have a distinct gut microbiota compared to healthy controls. Sci Rep 2016; 6:28484.

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