Chemomicrobiome analysis of lithium ascorbate and other organic lithium salts

Abstract

Lithium salts are used in medicine as normotimics. An important aspect of the action of any medicine, incl. lithium salts is their effect on the human microbiota (microbiome). This work presents the results of a comparative chemomicrobiome analysis of organic lithium salts: ascorbate, comenate, nicotinate, oxybutyrate, aspartate and lithium orotate, carried out using modern technologies for the analysis of “big data”. For each of the studied lithium salts, estimates of the values of the area under the growth curve (AUC) were obtained for a representative sample of human microbiota, which included 38 commensal bacteria (including various species of bifidobacteria and lactobacilli) and the values of the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) for 120 pathogenic bacteria. On average, over a representative sample of microbiota, lithium ascorbate supported the growth of all commensal bacteria to a somewhat greater extent (AUC = 0.57 ± 0.15) than comenat (AUC = 0.47 ± 0.17), nicotinate (AUC = 0.45 ± 0.22), lithium oxybutyrate (AUC = 0.22 ± 0.17), lithium aspartate (AUC = 0.31 ± 0.14) and lithium orotate (AUC = 0.50 ± 0.21). In the case of pathogens, MIC values were significantly lower for ascorbate (4.50 ± 3.69 μg/ml) than for comenat (6.31 ± 5.58 μg/ml), nicotinate (10.98 ± 9.37 μg/ml), oxybutyrate (7.45 ± 4.73 μg/ml), aspartate (6.37 ± 4.71 μg/ml) and lithium orotate (7.27 ± 5.81 μg/ml). Thus, lithium ascorbate is more effective in supporting commensal bacteria of a positive microbiota than the other three lithium salts and is characterized by certain antibacterial properties against pathogenic bacteria. At the same time, the ubiquitous lithium carbonate, which does not contain any fragments of organic molecules, will not have any positive effect on the state of the microbiota.