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. 2020 Dec 15:10:589297.
doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2020.589297. eCollection 2020.

A Pilot Study of the Effect of Deployment on the Gut Microbiome and Traveler's Diarrhea Susceptibility

Blake W Stamps  1   2 , Wanda J Lyon  1 , Adam P Irvin  1 , Nancy Kelley-Loughnane  1 , Michael S Goodson  1
Affiliations

A Pilot Study of the Effect of Deployment on the Gut Microbiome and Traveler's Diarrhea Susceptibility

Blake W Stamps et al. Front Cell Infect Microbiol. .

Abstract

Traveler's diarrhea (TD) is a recurrent and significant issue for many travelers including the military. While many known enteric pathogens exist that are causative agents of diarrhea, our gut microbiome may also play a role in TD susceptibility. To this end, we conducted a pilot study of the microbiome of warfighters prior to- and after deployment overseas to identify marker taxa relevant to TD. This initial study utilized full-length 16S rRNA gene sequencing to provide additional taxonomic resolution toward identifying predictive taxa.16S rRNA analyses of pre- and post-deployment fecal samples identified multiple marker taxa as significantly differentially abundant in subjects that reported diarrhea, including Weissella, Butyrivibrio, Corynebacterium, uncultivated Erysipelotrichaceae, Jeotgallibaca, unclassified Ktedonobacteriaceae, Leptolinea, and uncultivated Ruminiococcaceae. The ability to identify TD risk prior to travel will inform prevention and mitigation strategies to influence diarrhea susceptibility while traveling.

Keywords: 16S rRNA gene; deployment; diarrhea; dysbiosis; gut microbiome.

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Conflict of interest statement

BS is an employee of UES, Inc. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Deployment diarrhea survey summary statistics. (A) “yes/no” response grouped by geographic combatant command, and (B) for those that responded “yes”, the number of instances of diarrhea on deployment, again grouped by combatant command.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of all samples. Subjects with linked pre/post samples are shown with dashed lines connecting the pre and post sample types. Solid bars connect the same sample types (Pre or Post) within each subject on the PCA.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Heatmap of the 25 most abundant taxa, clustered by genus (A). Samples are faceted by DMM metacommunity, and by whether the respondents were diarrheal prior to, and while on deployment. Subjects that gave no response to the questionnaire are noted as “unknown” within the heatmap. Observed alpha diversity by individual subject (B), and average alpha diversity by deployment status (C), both estimated by the Shannon diversity index.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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