Dysbiosis of Gut Microbiota in Patients Undergoing Cardiac Surgery

Abstract

The diversity of bacteria, viruses, eukaryotic organisms, and archaea that live in the gastrointestinal tract and have coevolved with the host over thousands of years to establish a complex and advantageous relationship is referred to as the “gut microbiota” or “gut microbiome.” The numerous and diverse gut microbiota play an important role mostly in the betterment of human health by facilitating the breakdown of food to release nutrients that would otherwise be inaccessible to the host, encouraging host cells proliferation and differentiation, defending the host against pathogen colonization, and activating or modulating the immune system. The gut microbial community plays an important role in protecting the host against pathogenic microbes, modulating immunity, and regulating metabolic processes and is even regarded as an endocrine organ. The term “dysbiosis” refers to the imbalance of the gut bacterial microbiota, which has been linked to several disorders such as cardiovascular diseases, obesity, irritable bowel syndrome, colorectal cancer, and sepsis. During cardiac surgery, intestinal ischemia-reperfusion causes an inflammatory response throughout the body. Since the intestines are an organ that is vulnerable to ischemia, germs and endotoxins can move between organs. As a consequence, the gut leads to sepsis after surgery. Next-generation sequencing technologies have enabled analysis of a large number of microorganisms. Metagenomics can be used to study intestinal microbiome diversity and dysbiosis, as well as its relationship to health and disease. Sequence-based and multifunctional metagenomics will also provide insights that will lead to greater knowledge than it is ever been of the structural and functional microbiomes.