Role of Microbiome in Intensive Care Unit: from Bench to Bedside

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Background

Microorganisms and their metabolites play an important role in the diagnosis and treatment of human diseases. Recent studies have highlighted the role of the microbiome in patients with critical illnesses. The microbiome undergoes significant dysbiosis, characterized by a loss of diversity, site specificity, and a shift toward dominant pathogens. This dysbiosis may contribute to the development of sepsis, acute respiratory distress syndrome, ventriculitis, and meningitis, which are common conditions in the intensive care unit (ICU). However, there are still many questions that are not well answered. Have the emerging culture-independent sequencing techniques changed the clinical practice and improved patient prognosis? For clinical diseases, are antimicrobial drugs angels that save lives or demons that induce drug resistance and cause dysbiosis? Have new therapies focused on restoring microbiome balance achieved pathogen colonization resistance? Moreover, clinical scientists have come up with the concept of a disease-promoting microbiome or pathobiome, and they, in turn, are significantly associated with multi-organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS). All these questions require scientists to confirm their scientific hypotheses with clinical data.

This Research Topic aims to mine data, collect clinical samples, and further explore the role of the microbiome in critical illness to call for novel clinical diagnosis and new therapeutic strategies.

This Research Topic welcomes Original Research and Reviews focusing on, but not limited to, the following sub-topics:
• The microbiome of critically ill patients undergoes a significant and rapid dysbiosis with loss of diversity, loss of site specificity, and a shift toward dominant pathogens
• Lung microbiome in acute respiratory distress syndrome
• Cerebrospinal fluid microbiome in ventriculitis and meningitis
• Development of novel diagnostic tools based on microbiome profiling for the early detection of infections and sepsis in ICU patients
• The impact of antimicrobial use in the ICU on the microbiome and the development of antibiotic resistance

Keywords: microbiome, dysbiosis, intensive care unit (ICU), multi-organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS), antibiotics

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