Need Help?

Changes in Oral and Gut Microbiota and Incidence and Severity of Patient-Reported Symptoms in Pre- and Post-Kidney Transplant Patients

This novel prospective cohort explores the relationships between oral and fecal microbiome features (alpha and beta diversity, differential relative abundances of bacterial taxa, and functional genes) and the incidence and severity of psychoneurological symptoms (e.g., pain, fatigue, depression, anxiety, and sleep disturbance) before and after patients receive a kidney transplant from a live donor. Thirty-five subjects provided fecal and saliva specimens for shotgun metagenomic sequencing of gut and oral microbiomes at 3 timepoints: 1) within 4 weeks prior to the transplant surgery (at end-stage kidney disease), 2) 1-3 weeks after the transplant surgery, and 3) at 3 months after the transplant (after restoration of kidney function). Subjects were enrolled between October, 2018, to November, 2021, and all study visits were completed by March, 2022. Data collected includes: Demographic (age, biological sex at birth, race/ethnicity, marital status); clinical data (body mass index, dialysis status, type of dialysis, high vs. low risk immune-suppression protocol, antibiotics during study period); laboratory data (serum creatinine; estimated glomerular filtration rate; serum blood urea nitrogen; immunosuppression trough levels), and outcome data (symptoms such as pain interference, pain intensity, fatigue, anxiety, depression, sleep disturbance, acute rejection, delayed graft failure, graft loss, post-transplant infections, and health-related quality of life). Incidence and severity of symptoms, including pain interference, pain intensity, fatigue, sleep dysfunction, and anxiety/depression-like symptoms, were measured using the Patient Reported Outcome Measurement Systems (PROMIS) 57 v2.1. Health related quality of life was assessed using the Kidney Disease Quality of Life Short Form (KDQOL-SF v1.3).

The objective of this longitudinal study is to characterize changes in microbial features at baseline, before restoration of kidney function, and over time, after restoration of kidney function via kidney transplantation, and to identify relationships between microbiome features and transplant outcomes (rejection, infection, delayed graft function, graft failure), symptom burden, and health-related quality of life. Shotgun metagenomic sequencing of the oral and gut microbiomes will allow a higher-resolution examination of the gut microbiome compared to 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, and will provide direct evidence of metabolic capabilities of the microbiota. This approach will allow us to explore the dynamic nature of symptom burden, and the effects of demographic and clinical variables on the oral and gut microbiomes before and after restoration of kidney function.