Exercise training modifies gut microbiota with attenuated host responses to sepsis in wild-type mice

What is it about?

Sepsis is a devastating host response to local infections that leads to multiple organ failure and high mortality. Despite progress in the development of novel treatment modalities and therapeutic strategies for sepsis, deaths due to sepsis remain stubbornly high. Consequently, more effort directed at prevention and/or suppression rather than treatment appears to be warranted. In this context, recent studies showed that exercise/and exercise training-induced health benefits might be associated with changes in the composition of the gut microbiota. In this study, therefore, we were interested in investigating if exercise training-induced changes in gut microbiome environment alleviate the devastating host response to an experimental sepsis in wild-type mice. Eight week of treadmill running induced more symbiotic changes in gut microbiota composition in wild-type mice. Consequently, preconditioned mice had a higher survival rate and less organ damage during an experimentally-induced sepsis via attenuation of immune responses to the septic shock, as compared to control mice. The current findings show that exercise preconditioning-induced changes in gut microbiota composition may lead to attenuation against sepsis and its clinical consequences.

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