Highlights from the UEG WEEK 2021
CONGRESS REVIEW
By Pr. Erick Manuel Toro Monjaraz
Instituto Nacional de Pediatría, INP Department of Gastroenterology, Mexico City, Mexico
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Created
15 December 2021
Updated
05 August 2022
The UEG week is the European Gastrointestinal Congress where the last advances in Gastroenterology all over the world, especially in microbiota are shown; the high quality of the works presented made it difficult to choose those covered in this paper.
Targeting the gut microbiota in IBS
Dr. Gerard Clark, focusing on the interaction and role of microbiota in the IBS, showed in his presentation that the microbiota regulates visceral pain in the mouse. Germ-free animals have an exaggerated stress response, and probiotics reduce the stress-induced cortisone levels. Many mechanisms explain this interaction; one of them is serotonin. Dr. Clark presented a paper by Marco Constante that demonstrated that microbiota from IBS subjects with comorbid anxiety induced both GI dysfunction and anxiety-like behavior in recipient animals. This scenario opens the opportunity to use prebiotics, probiotics, and fermented foods as psychobiotics (probiotics with effect in central nervous system), helping in IBS symptoms and the psychiatric conditions associated with IBS [1].
Resistome in Helicobacter pylori eradication
As we know, antimicrobial resistance is a cause of concern, and gut microbiota is a reservoir of antimicrobial resistance genes. In previous studies, diet and foods that offer health benefits beyond their nutritional value known as functional food, modify the gut resistome with promising results. Specific probiotic strains have shown to decrease the abundance of multi resistant bacteria. In Quito, Ecuador, Dr. Cifuentes, and her group compared the fecal resistome of patients treated for H. pylori eradication (triple therapy) with and without specific probiotic strain added to treatment. They demonstrated that adding specific probiotic strain reduces the presence of antimicrobial resistance genes; the mechanism proposed is the modulation of the gut microbiota and the immune system and the production of fatty acids with antimicrobial and inhibitory properties of conjugation [2].
Can we prevent inflammatory bowel disease by targeting gut microbiota?
Pr. Marla Dubinsky presented a lecture that tries to answer this question. There is an increasing incidence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in very young children and increasing incidence in 2nd generation of immigrants coming from low to high incidence IBD areas, probably associated with changes in the gut microbiota; there is evidence of the role of the gut microbiota in the genesis of IBD, for example in the MECONIUM study perform by Torres J et al., they show that babies of mothers with IBD have a different microbiota compared with healthy children; Also, the diet has a specific role in IBD, specifically, by modulating microbiota; the western diet is proinflammatory with lower Prevotella spp; this change leads to an endotoxins increase. In conclusion, with technology advances, in the future, we can identify specific microbiota populations and prevent IBD without adverse events [3].
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1 O’Mahony SM, Clarke G, Borre YE, et al. Serotonin, tryptophan metabolism and the brain-gut-microbiome axis. Behav Brain Res 2015; 277: 32-48.
2 Galipeau HJ, Caminero A, Turpin W, et al. Novel Fecal Biomarkers That Precede Clinical Diagnosis of Ulcerative Colitis. Gastroenterology 2021; 160: 1532-45.
3 Newman AM, Arshad M. The Role of Probiotics, Prebiotics and Synbiotics in Combating Multidrug-Resistant Organisms. Clin Ther 2020; 42: 1637-48.
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