Lactobacillus pentosus KCA1 Decreases Vaginal and Gut Microbiota Associated with Bacterial Vaginosis (BV), Down-regulates IL-1 beta in Women of Child-Bearing Age and Modulates Bacterial Genes Related to Metabolic Functions

Abstract

ABSTRACTIntroductionBacterial vaginosis which affects 14-50% of reproductive-aged women in Nigeria is misdiagnosed and under-reported. Treatment option is antibiotics, which leads to recurrent infections. The objectives of this study are three folds, first to determine effects of oral feeding of Lactobacillus pentosus KCA1 on the vaginal and gut microbiota of women diagnosed with BV; to measure the level of two proinflammatory cytokines IL-1 beta, before and after KCA1 consumption and to determine the relative abundance of bacterial metabolic genes.MethodsSeven women diagnosed with BV by Nugent score (7-10) were recruited to provide vaginal and gut sample before and after 14 days oral intake of 3 grams of Lactobacillus pentosus KCA1. The DNA from the swabs were processed for 16S rRNA metagenomics using Illumina MiSeq platform. The paired-end sequence FASTQ reads were imported into Illumina Basespace pipeline for quality check (QC). In addition, EzBioCloud pipeline was use for alpha and beta diversity estimation using PKSSU4.0 version and open reference UCLUST_MC2 for OTUs picking at 97% cut-off. Blood samples were analyzed using ELISA technique. PICRUSt was used to predict the metabolic functions from the 16S rRNA gene dataset.ResultsOn average, there was no significant difference at p=0.05 in the alpha indices typified by Shannon index. The beta diversity showed different clustering positions with PCoA. However, at individual taxonomic categories, there was a significant decrease in the relative abundance of some genera associated with bacterial vaginosis after KCA1 feeding with a corresponding increase of Lactobacillus genera. Bacterial genes related to defence systems were up-regulated in the vagina. There was a 2-fold down-regulation of IL-1 beta after consumption of KCA1.ConclusionOur findings suggest that Lactobacillus pentosus KCA1 taken orally, lowers pro-inflammatory cytokine, IL-1 beta and decreases the relative abundance of BV-associated bacteria.