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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Microorganisms in Vertebrate Digestive Systems
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1468842
This article is part of the Research Topic Innovative Therapeutic Strategies Targeting Early-Life Gut Microbiota: Pathways to Long-Term Health Benefits View all 10 articles

Oxygenation and intestinal perfusion and its association with perturbations of the early life gut microbiota composition of children with congenital heart disease

Provisionally accepted
Hanna Renk Hanna Renk 1,2*Ulrich Schoppmeier Ulrich Schoppmeier 3Jennifer Müller Jennifer Müller 3,4Vanessa Kuger Vanessa Kuger 1Felix Neunhoeffer Felix Neunhoeffer 1Christian Gille Christian Gille 5Silke Maria Peter Silke Maria Peter 2,3
  • 1 University Children's Hospital Tübingen, Tuebingen, Germany
  • 2 German Centre for Infection Research (DZIF), Partner Site Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany
  • 3 Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany, Tübingen, Germany
  • 4 NGS Competence Center, Tübingen University Hospital, Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
  • 5 Department of Neonatology, Heidelberg University Children's Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background: Early life gut microbiota is known to shape the immune system and has a crucial role in immune homeostasis. Only little is known about composition and dynamics of the intestinal microbiota in infants with congenital heart disease (CHD) and potential influencing factors.We evaluated the intestinal microbial composition of neonates with CHD (n=13) compared to healthy controls (HC, n=30). Fecal samples were analyzed by shotgun metagenomics. Different approaches of statistical modeling were applied to assess the impact of influencing factors on variation in species composition. Unsupervised hierarchical clustering of the microbial composition of neonates with CHD was used to detect associations of distinct clusters with intestinal tissue oxygenation and perfusion parameters, obtained by the "oxygen to see" (O2C) method.Results: Overall, neonates with CHD showed an intestinal core microbiota dominated by the genera Enterococcus (27%) and Staphylococcus (20%). Furthermore, a lower abundance of the genera Bacteroides (8% vs 14%), Parabacteroides (1% vs 3%), Bifidobacterium (4% vs 12%), and Escherichia (8% vs 23%) was observed in CHD compared to HCs. CHD patients that were born by vaginal delivery showed a lower fraction of the genera Bacteroides (15% vs 21%) and Bifidobacterium (7% vs 22%) compared to HCs and in those born by cesarean section, these genera were not found at all. In infants with CHD, we found a significant impact of oxygen saturation (SpO2) on relative abundances of the intestinal core microbiota by multivariate analysis of variance (F[8,2]=24.9, p=0.04).Statistical modeling suggested a large proportional shift from a microbiota dominated by the genus Streptococcus (50%) in conditions with low SpO2 towards the genus Enterococcus (61%) in conditions with high SpO2. We identified three distinct compositional microbial clusters, corresponding neonates differed significantly in intestinal blood flow and global gut perfusion.Early life differences in gut microbiota of CHD neonates versus HCs are possibly linked to oxygen levels. Delivery method may affect microbiota stability. However, further studies are needed to assess the effect of potential interventions including probiotics or fecal transplants on early life microbiota perturbations in neonates with CHD.

    Keywords: congenital heart disease, intestinal microbiota, Next-generation sequencing, oxygen to see, O2C, oxygenation, gut microbiome

    Received: 22 Jul 2024; Accepted: 10 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Renk, Schoppmeier, Müller, Kuger, Neunhoeffer, Gille and Peter. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Hanna Renk, University Children's Hospital Tübingen, Tuebingen, Germany

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