The Microbiome and Blood Pressure: Can Microbes Regulate Our Blood Pressure?

Abstract

The surfaces of the human body are heavily populated by a highly diverse microbial ecosystem termed the microbiota. The largest and richest among these highly heterogeneous populations of microbes is the gut microbiota. The collection of microbes and their genes, called the microbiome, has been studied intensely through the past few years using novel metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, and metabolomics approaches. This has enhanced our understanding of how the microbiome affects our metabolic, immunologic, neurologic, and endocrine homeostasis. Hypertension is a leading cause of cardiovascular disease worldwide; it contributes to stroke, heart disease, kidney failure, premature death, and disability. Recently, studies in humans and animals have shown that alterations in microbiota and its metabolites are associated with hypertension and atherosclerosis. In this review, we compile the recent findings and hypotheses describing the interplay between the microbiome and blood pressure, and we highlight some prospects by which utilization of microbiome-related techniques may be incorporated to better understand the pathophysiology and treatment of hypertension.

Integrating omics for a better understanding of Inflammatory Bowel Disease: a step towards personalized medicine

“…Changes in the gut microbial compositions or microbial dysbiosis, is defined as a decrease in the intestinal microbial diversity resulting in an imbalance between commensal "protective" versus potential pathogens "harmful", thus promoting an excessive intestinal inflammation [52]. When persistent, this response can induce a chronic, unregulated intestinal inflammation that is observed in various human diseases such as IBD, irritable bowel syndrome, asthma, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, kidney diseases, to name a few, from the wide array of diseases known to present with gut dysbiosis [39,41,[53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72].…”

Gut microbiota and inflammation in chronic kidney disease and their roles in the development of cardiovascular disease

“…Changes in the gut microbiota can affect cardiovascular health; in fact, transplantation of cecal contents from stroke-prone SHRs to normotensive rats resulted in blood pressure elevation of the normotensive rats [155]. The gut microbiota can affect cardiovascular function principally through inflammatory, metabolic/ endocrine, and neurologic pathways [156]. In turn, deterioration of cardiovascular function worsens gut barrier dysfunction and dysbiosis [150], creating a vicious cycle resulting in aggravation of CVD.…”

“…CVD is closely associated with chronic systemic inflammation [157], and the gut microbiota can affect the course of CVD development through its effects on inflammatory processes [158]. The gut microbiota can alter the host's tendency for inflammation through direct effects on gut barrier function [29]; interactions with Th cells [39]; and metabolic, endocrine, and neurologic activities [156]. In fact, gut barrier dysfunction can promote CVD development [159].…”

Uddanam Kidney Nephropathy Under the Light of Metagenomics Perspective

“…Dysbiosis was proven to be one of the important causative factors for diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, bowel disease, cardiovascular disease, cancer and asthma [20,[22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. Now a days, there are an increasing number of evidences recorded, which state that due to dysbiosis there might be the progression of CKD and CKD-related problems [30,31].…”