Lack of gut microbiome recovery with spinal cord injury rehabilitation

ABSTRACT

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating event that significantly changes daily function and quality of life and is linked to bowel and bladder dysfunction and frequent antibiotic treatment. We aimed to study the composition of the gut microbiome in individuals with SCI during the initial sub-acute rehabilitation process and during the chronic phase of the injury. This study included 100 fecal samples from 63 participants (Median age 40 years, 94% males): 13 cases with SCI in the sub-acute phase with 50 longitudinal samples, 18 cases with chronic SCI, and 32 age and gender-matched controls. We show, using complementary methods, that the time from the injury was a dominant factor linked with gut microbiome composition. Surprisingly, we demonstrated a lack of gut microbial recovery during rehabilitation during the sub-acute phase, with further deviation from the non-SCI control group in the chronic ambulatory SCI group. To generalize the results, we were able to show significant similarity of the signal when comparing to a previous cohort with SCI, to subjects from the American Gut Project who reported low physical activity, and to subjects from another population-based cohort who reported less normal stool consistency. Restoration of the microbiome composition may be another desirable measure for SCI recovery in the future, but further research is needed to test whether such restoration is associated with improved neurological outcomes and quality of life.

KEYWORDS:

• Spinal cord injury
• gut microbiome
• rehabilitation

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge all participants in the study. This work was done as part of Ayelet Gur Arie MS studies.

Disclosure statement

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

Authors contributions to the manuscript

AGA, AA, GZ, and YH conceived and designed the study, analyzed the data, and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. AGA, GZ also recruited patients.

IT, RH, TB, GE, EGS, SM generated and analyzed the data and participated in drafting the manuscript. All authors had access to study data and approved the decision to submit the manuscript.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/19490976.2024.2309682

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

Support was provided by the ERC starting grant (YH, grant No 758313), the Israel Science Foundation (YH, grant No 908/15, 785/22), and the I-CORE program (YH, grants No 41/11). The funding sources did not play a role in the writing of the manuscript or the decision to submit it for publication and did not play a role in data collection, analysis, interpretation; trial design; patient recruitment; or any aspect pertinent to the study.