Akkermansia muciniphila reduces susceptibility to Listeria monocytogenes infection in mice fed a high-fat diet

ABSTRACT

A high-fat (HF) diet reduces resistance to the foodborne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes. We demonstrate that short-term gavage with A. muciniphila increases resistance to oral and systemic L. monocytogenes infection in mice fed a HF diet. A. muciniphila reduced inflammation in the gut and liver of mice fed a high-fat diet prior to infection and reduced inflammatory cell infiltration in the ileum to levels similar to mice fed a low-fat (LF) diet. Akkermansia administration had minimal impacts upon the microbiota and microbial metabolites and did not affect individual taxa or impact the Bacteroidetes to Firmicutes ratio. In summary, A. muciniphila increased resistance to L. monocytogenes infection in mice fed a HF diet by moderating immune/physiological effects through specific interaction between A. muciniphila and the host gut.

KEYWORDS:

• Akkermansia muciniphila
• Listeria
• high-fat diet
• infection
• resistance
• inflammation
• goblet cells
• microbiome
• metabolites

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge funding and support from Science Foundation Ireland in the form of a centre grant (APC Microbiome Ireland grant SFI/12/RC/2273_P2). The authors wish to acknowledge funding of JK from Science Foundation Ireland grant 16/IA/4445. This research was partly funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 641984, through funding of the List_MAPS consortium. We wish to thank Paul O’Toole, APC Microbiome Ireland, for help and expertise with A. muciniphila culture, Niall Hyland for general discussions and advice, Juliet Barry for support with H&E staining and Suzanne Crotty for support with acquisition of histology images.

Consent for publication

All authors consent to publication of this work and have had an opportunity to review the manuscript.

Data availability statement

All data are available on Zenodo at the following link https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7590374.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics approval

All animal experiments were performed following ethical review by the University College Cork Animal Experimentation Ethics Committee (AEEC) and following project authorization by the Irish Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA) (project number AE19130/P115).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the European Commission [641984]; Science Foundation Ireland [SFI/16/IA/4445]; Science Foundation Ireland [SFI/12/RC/2273_P2].