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Low diversity of gut microbiota in the early phase of post-bone marrow transplantation increases the risk of chronic graft-versus-host disease

Bone Marrow Transplantation volume 56, pages 1728–1731 (2021)Cite this article

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Although allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) is a potentially curative treatment for patients with hematological diseases, transplant-related complications sometimes become seriously problematic. Of these, chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) is one of the most important late-phase complications that reduce the quality of life and may even threaten the lives of posttransplant patients [1].

An increasing body of evidence indicates that gut microbiota and their metabolites are closely associated with transplant outcomes. Although lower gut microbiota diversity has been observed in the incidence of acute GVHD (aGVHD) [2], few studies have reported a similar relationship in cGVHD [3]. Thus, we retrospectively analyzed whether gut microbial diversity in the early phase of posttransplantation would affect the occurrence of cGVHD.

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Fig. 1: Bacterial diversity of the gut and cumulative incidence of chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) in relation to gut microbial diversity.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the patients who participated in this study. We would like to thank Ms. Mayako Asakawa, Ms. Junko Ohta, and Mr. Yutaka Takashima for their technical assistance, Ms. Motoko Oda for clinical data management, and Dr. Tetsuo Maeda for the additional data collection. We would also like to thank Editage (www.editage.jp) for English language editing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hematology Division, Tokyo Metropolitan Komagome Hospital, Tokyo, Japan

    Tatsuya Konishi, Kyoko Inamoto, Kota Yoshifuji, Takashi Toya, Aiko Igarashi, Yuho Najima, Takeshi Kobayashi, Noriko Doki, Kazuteru Ohashi & Kazuhiko Kakihana

  2. Department of Hematology and Oncology, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka, Japan

    Shinsuke Kusakabe, Akihisa Hino, Takafumi Yokota, Hirohiko Shibayama & Kentaro Fukushima

  3. Department of Hematology, Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Tokyo, Japan

    Kota Yoshifuji

  4. JSR-Keio University Medical and Chemical Innovation Center (JKiC), Tokyo, Japan

    Yuko Kiridoshi, Atsushi Shiota & Koji Atarashi

  5. Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan

    Kozue Takeshita, Satoshi Sasajima & Kenya Honda

  6. Department of Infection Metagenomics, Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

    Daisuke Motooka & Shota Nakamura

  7. Division of Nephrology and Hypertension, Department of Internal Medicine, The Jikei University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan

    Masahiro Suyama

  8. RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences (IMS), Tokyo, Japan

    Masahiro Suyama, Wataru Suda, Masahira Hattori & Kenya Honda

  9. Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

    Wataru Suda & Masahira Hattori

  10. Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Wataru Suda & Masahira Hattori

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  1. Tatsuya Konishi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kazuhiko Kakihana.

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Conflict of interest

KH is a scientific advisory board member of Vedanta Bioscience and 4BIO CAPITAL. YK and AS are employees of JSR Corporation. KH was funded through AMED LEAP under grant number JP20gm0010003. KK was funded through AMED under grant number JP19ek0510021 and Friends of Leukemia Research Fund.

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Konishi, T., Kusakabe, S., Hino, A. et al. Low diversity of gut microbiota in the early phase of post-bone marrow transplantation increases the risk of chronic graft-versus-host disease. Bone Marrow Transplant 56, 1728–1731 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41409-021-01249-2

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