Fine tuning the gut-liver-axis
- PDF / 492,656 Bytes
- 2 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 98 Downloads / 175 Views
LETTER TO THE EDITOR, NEWS AND VIEWS
Fine tuning the gut‑liver‑axis Maiju Myllys1 Received: 13 August 2020 / Accepted: 17 August 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
In the recent issue of Hepatology, Liu and colleagues published a study where liver fibrosis in mice was ameliorated by modification of the gut microbiota (Liu et al. 2020). In cholestatic liver disease, bile flux from the liver to the intestine is impaired, leading to an increase of bile acid concentrations in liver tissue (Liu et al. 2020; Jansen et al. 2017; Leist et al. 2017). An important adaptive mechanism against cholestasis is repression of bile acid synthesis via the negative feedback receptor FXR (Gomez-Ospina et al. 2016). This negative feedback mechanism can be compromised by different factors, which may aggravate bile acid overloading of the liver and cause disease progression. In this context, Liu and colleagues made an important and possibly clinically relevant contribution by modification of gut microbiota (Liu et al. 2020). They observed that administration of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG (LGG) by oral gavage for 11 consecutive days reduces liver fibrosis in mouse models, such as Mdr2−/− and common bile duct ligation. In their present study, they demonstrated that LGG reduced hepatic concentrations of taurine-β-muricholic acid (T-βMCA), which acts as an FXR antagonist, thereby blocking the desired negative feedback. Moreover, LGG treatment increased the expression of FGF-15, which reduced bile acid synthesis. In recent years, numerous research projects aimed at a deeper understanding of how the liver compensates damage (Hoehme et al. 2010; Svinka et al. 2017; Damle-Vartak et al. 2019; Vartak et al. 2016; Ghallab et al. 2016). Bile acids play a central role because they may leak into the tissue and cause inflammation (Ghallab et al. 2019; Godoy et al. 2013, 2016). It will be interesting to learn if the mechanism discovered by Liu et al. (2020) is of clinical relevance. This still remains open because the relevance of interspecies differences between humans and mice concerning the FXR-mediated feedback mechanism remains to be clarified. * Maiju Myllys [email protected] 1
Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, Ardeystr. 67, 44139 Dortmund, Germany
The observation of Liu and colleagues is important for the field of liver toxicology because relatively little is known about how chemicals modify the microbiota and influence the gut-liver-axis.
Compliance with ethical standards Conflict of interest The author declares that she has no conflict of interest.
References Damle-Vartak A, Begher-Tibbe B, Gunther G et al (2019) Pipe-3D: a pipeline based on immunofluorescence, 3D confocal imaging, reconstructions, and morphometry for biliary network analysis in cholestasis. Methods Mol Biol 1981:25–53. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-1-4939-9420-5_3 Ghallab A, Cellière G, Henkel SG et al (2016) Model-guided identification of a therapeutic strategy to reduce hyperammonemia in liver diseases.
Data Loading...
