ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Multiple Sclerosis and Neuroimmunology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1590601
This article is part of the Research TopicImmune-gut-brain axis - A Key Player in Overall Human PathologiesView all articles
Understanding the Microbiome in Autologous Haemopoietic Stem Cell Transplant (AHSCT) for Multiple Sclerosis
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- 2School of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- 3Blood Stem Cell and Cancer Research Group, St. Vincent's Centre for Applied Medical Research, New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
- 4Department of Neurology, St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney, Australia
- 5Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, St. Vincent's Hospital, New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
BackgroundMS is a chronic inflammatory and degenerative disease of the central nervous system (CNS) resulting in neurological deficits associated with physical and/or cognitive disability. The gut microbiome can interact with the CNS and immune system through various molecular pathways and has been previously implicated in MS. Autologous Haematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant (AHSCT) in MS arrests inflammatory disease and has evidence of long-term therapeutic benefit. To date, no study has explored the effect of AHSCT on the gut microbiome in people with MS.MethodThe microbiome of people with MS (pwMS) undergoing AHSCT was compared with pwMS on Natalizumab (NTZ). Longitudinal microbiome analysis was also conducted within the AHSCT cohort at two timepoints. Amplicon sequencing of the 16S ribosomal RNA V3-4 region (Illumina MiSeq) was used to evaluate alpha and beta diversity, oral-stool microbiota distances, and relative taxa abundances on both oral and stool microbiota.ResultsThe pre-transplant, baseline samples from the AHSCT cohort (n=8) was compared to the Natalizumab group (n=22). The AHSCT cohort had lower oral species richness compared to the NTZ cohort (p=0.026). There was a significant difference in oral beta diversity between the two cohorts (p=0.043). The oral taxa analysis of AHSCT subjects showed increased relative abundances of Porphyromonas and decreased Veillonella. ConclusionThis pilot study identified specific microbiome changes, particularly in the oral alpha diversity and abundance of specific bacteria which may reflect treatment status or disease activity in MS.
Keywords: Multiple Sclerosis, gut microbiome, Autologous Haemopoietic Stem Cell Transplant (AHSCT), Dysbiosis, immune reconstitution (IR)
Received: 10 Mar 2025; Accepted: 15 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yin, Kaakoush, Massey and Danta. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jun Yin, School of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, New South Wales, Australia
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.