Project description:Dietary gluten proteins (prolamins) from wheat, rye, and barley are the driving forces behind celiac disease, an organ-specific autoimmune disorder that targets both the small intestine and organs outside the gut. In the small intestine, gluten induces inflammation and a typical morphological change of villous atrophy and crypt hyperplasia. Gut lesions improve and heal when gluten is excluded from the diet and the disease relapses when patients consume gluten. Oral immune tolerance towards gluten may be kept for years or decades before breaking tolerance in genetically susceptible individuals. Celiac disease provides a unique opportunity to study autoimmunity and the transition in immune cells as gluten breaks oral tolerance. Seventy-three celiac disease patients on a long-term gluten-free diet ingested a known amount of gluten daily for six weeks. A peripheral blood sample and intestinal biopsies were taken before and six weeks after initiating the gluten challenge. Biopsy results were reported on a continuous numeric scale that measured the villus height to crypt depth ratio to quantify gluten-induced gut mucosal injury. Pooled B and T cells were isolated from whole blood, and RNA was analyzed by DNA microarray looking for changes in peripheral B- and T-cell gene expression that correlated with changes in villus height to crypt depth, as patients maintained or broke oral tolerance in the face of a gluten challenge.
Project description:Coeliac disease is a small intestinal disorder caused by an abarrent immune response towards dietary gluten due to activation of pro-inflammatory gluten specific CD4+ T cells. Histological evaluation and classification of gluten induced musosal changes is part of the diagnostic work up. of adults. The kinetics of mucosal recovery following commencesment of a gluten free diet (disease remission) and the degree of mucosal changes induced by gluten reintroduction (gluten challenge) varies between patients. Also, patients classified with similar clinical and histological disease remission, can develop different degree of mucosal damage following the same gluten challenge regime. This variation poses a challenge for the interpretation of gluten induced mucosal changes both in a diagnostic and clinical trial settings. In this study, we have analysed material from small intestinal biopsies collected from 19 treated coeliac disease patients before and after completion of a 14-day oral gluten challenge. These patients are part of a previoslpreviouslyu described study where all patients were in clinical and mucosal remission at baseline but only some patients developed histological changes in the mucosa in response to gluten. We have performed shotgun LC-MSMS analysis and label-free quantification of total gut tissue and from laser capture microdissected epithelial cell layer samples. We found that differences in tissue proteome expression could separate patients as responders and non-responders to the gluten challenge. Patients whoich responded strongly to gluten , had signs of gut inflammation already at baseline, supported by presence of low-level blood inflammatory parameters and a slight increase in numbers of gluten-specific CD4+ T cells at baseline. Our proteomics analysis demonstrated baseline differences in gut tissue state between patients that were not evident from routine clinical and histological evaluation. These baseline differences likely explains why some patients respond more strongly to gluten challenge than others.
Project description:This study was designed to address key questions concerning the use of alternative protein sources for animal feeds and addresses aspects such as their nutrient composition and impact on gut function. The transcriptional response of intestinal mucosal tissue (jejunum and ileum) served as parameters for the local response. Growing pigs (BW 35 kg/approx. 10 weeks) were fed with experimental diets containing a single, common or new protein sources viz. soybean meal (SBM), black soldier fly larvae (BSF), spray dried blood plasma (SDPP), rapeseed meal (RSM), and wheat gluten meal (WGM) over a period of 4 weeks.
Project description:Morphine and its pharmacological derivatives are the most prescribed analgesics for moderate to severe pain management. However, chronic use of morphine reduces pathogen clearance and induces bacterial translocation across the gut barrier. The enteric microbiome has been shown to play a critical role in the preservation of the mucosal barrier function and metabolic homeostasis. Here, we show for the first time, using bacterial 16s rDNA sequencing, that chronic morphine treatment significantly alters the gut microbial composition and induces preferential expansion of the gram-positive pathogenic and reduction of bile-deconjugating bacterial strains. A significant reduction in both primary and secondary bile acid levels was seen in the gut, but not in the liver with morphine treatment. Morphine induced microbial dysbiosis and gut barrier disruption was rescued by transplanting placebo-treated microbiota into morphine-treated animals, indicating that microbiome modulation could be exploited as a therapeutic strategy for patients using morphine for pain management. In this study, we establish a link between the two phenomena, namely gut barrier compromise and dysregulated bile acid metabolism. We show for the first time that morphine fosters significant gut microbial dysbiosis and disrupts cholesterol/bile acid metabolism. Changes in the gut microbial composition is strongly correlated to disruption in host inflammatory homeostasis13,14 and in many diseases (e.g. cancer/HIV infection), persistent inflammation is known to aid and promote the progression of the primary morbidity. We show here that chronic morphine, gut microbial dysbiosis, disruption of cholesterol/bile acid metabolism and gut inflammation; have a linear correlation. This opens up the prospect of devising minimally invasive adjunct treatment strategies involving microbiome and bile acid modulation and thus bringing down morphine-mediated inflammation in the host.