A study, led by Nazima Pathan (Paediatrics) and colleagues, describes how metabolites produced by healthy bacteria could be used to assess the health of the gut microbiome.
 
In critical illness, the gut microbiome may be damaged by the use of antibiotics and lack of feeding. This may inadvertently cause the loss of many healthy gut bacteria. Children have a less developed microbiome so may be at particular risk of damage to the composition of the microbiome and therefore the important contributions it makes to their health.
 
The study, published in Critical Care Medicine, undertook metagenomic profiling of the faecal microbiome alongside metabolic profiling to examine host and microbial co-metabolites in faecal and urine samples from a cohort of critically ill and healthy children.
 
Researchers found that in seriously ill children, chemicals normally produced by the healthy gut microbiome were dramatically reduced, which was in line with the reduction in abundance of healthy gut bacteria. These depleted chemicals have a number of beneficial activities for the body, including maintaining a healthy gut lining, regulating appetite and supporting the immune system. Levels of some of these bacterial metabolites were associated with how sick the children were. The planned development of a more practical bedside assay will use the microbiome’s functional capacity to identify children at greatest risk of organ failure.