Influence of gut microbiota and intestinal barrier on enterogenic infection after liver transplantation

Abstract

Liver transplantation is currently a standard therapy for patients with end-stage liver diseases and hepatocellular carcinoma. Given that liver transplantation has undergone a thriving development in these decades, the survival rates after liver transplantation have markedly improved as a result of the critical advancement in surgical techniques, immunosuppressive therapies, and post-operative care. However, infection remains a fatal complication after liver transplantation surgery. In particular, enterogenic infection represents a major complication in liver transplant recipients. This article gives an overview of infection cases after liver transplantation and focuses on the discussion of enterogenic infection in terms of its pathophysiology, risk factor, outcome, and treatment.

Keywords:

• Liver transplantation
• complication
• enterogenic infection
• gut microbiota
• bacterial translocation
• intestinal barrier function

Transparency

Declaration of funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81370583 and 30801127).

Declaration of financial/other relationships

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work and that they do not have any commercial or associative interest that represents a conflict of interest in connection with the work submitted. CMRO peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Acknowledgments

We thank Professor Tonghui Ma for advice on this paper and Professor Yunhong Wu for valuable discussions, and we thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China for financial support.