Good Bugs, Bad Bugs in the Gut: The Role of Microbiota Dysbiosis in Chronic Gastrointestinal Consequences of Infection

摘要

Infectious diarrheal disease is most often self-limiting, but recent evidence indicates that the health consequences of enteric infections go far beyond acute diarrhea, and that enteric infections may lead to post-infectious intestinal and extra intestinal inflammatory disorders, failure to thrive, as well as growth and cognitive impairment. A broad range of these disorders, as well as others that are not directly related to enteritis, have been associated with gut microbiota dysbiosis, but the mechanisms responsible for these post-infectious abnormalities remain unclear. Most of the research findings available to date elaborate on characterization of dysbiotic fecal microbiota that are then associated with a disease phenotype. Much less is known of causality, and more research needs to investigate mucosal gut microbiota, that live on the intestinal surface as a microbial biofilm. This review discusses how post-infectious complications have been linked to microbiota disturbances, presents an update on what is known of the intestinal microbiota biofilm phenotype, and discusses the most recent evidence implicating enteropathogen-induced microbiota biofilm disruption in post-infectious inflammation.