https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34029686/
Glenn Stevenson, Ph.D., professor of psychology, recently published a paper on gut microbiome modulation of inflammatory pain co-authored by ten current and former UNE undergraduate students.
The paper, “Effects of vancomycin on persistent pain-stimulated and pain-depressed behaviors in female Fischer rats with or without voluntary access to running wheels”, was published in a high-impact, peer-reviewed journal, The Journal of Pain, the journal of The United States Association for the Study of Pain.
The research paper examines the impact of antibiotics on the gut microbiome and how antibiotic use can alter inflammatory pain in subjects with or without access to exercise.
Collaborators / co-authors included Dr. Elliot Friedman, Ph.D., Penn Perelman School of Medicine Division of Gastroenterology and Drs. Lisa Mattei, Jung-Jin Lee, and Kyle Bittinger from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Microbiome Center and Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition. Additional co-authors included long-term collaborators with the Stevenson Lab – Meghan May, Ph.D. and Tamara King, Ph.D., from UNE COM.
According to Stevenson, this is the first publication to assess how antibiotic-induced changes to the gut microbiome impact inflammatory pain distal to the gut (in the limbs for example), using behavioral procedures developed in the Stevenson Lab.
Results from this study indicate that the glycopeptide antibiotic vancomycin decreases pain-related behaviors and that manipulation of the gut microbiome may be one method to attenuate inflammatory pain amplitude. Additionally, results indicated that a causal mechanism for this reduction in pain may be due to an antibiotic-induced shift in gut amino acid concentrations. The link between amino acids and pain reduction is highly novel. The research for this study took four years to complete.
The paper was co-authored by ten current and former undergraduate student researchers in Stevenson’s lab. Additionally, first author went to one of Stevenson’s students. Student co-authors were: Emily Payne, ‘19 (Medical Biology); Kylee Harrington, ’20 (Neuroscience); Philomena Richard, ’18 (Neuroscience); Rebecca Brackin, ‘19 (Medical Biology); Ravin Davis, ‘21 (Neuroscience); Sarah Couture, ’18 (Medical Biology); Jacob Liff, ’19 (Neuroscience); Francesca Asmus, ’22 (Neuroscience); Elizabeth Mutina, ’20 (Neuroscience); Anyssa Fisher, ’19 (Neuroscience).
Additional co-authors included Denise Giuvelis, B.S., manager of the UNE COBRE Behavior Core, Sebastian Sannajust, B.S., former lab manager to Dr. Tamara King’s, and Bahman Rostama, Ph.D., former post-doctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Meghan May.
“This is another example of the high-quality, high-impact research that our UNE undergraduate students are engaged in daily. These co-authorships go a long way toward securing post-graduate positions for our students”, Stevenson said.
He also spoke of the interprofessional nature of the research.
“This publication represents a highly interdisciplinary research team with expertise in genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, pharmacology, psychology, neuroscience, microbiology and virology (phew!!). When you put all these disciplines together to solve a single problem, you end up doing innovative, creative, and significant work. The main ideas for this research were generated in meetings between me, Meghan, and Tamara. I then reached out to Penn and Children’s Hospital researchers who subsequently joined our group, and the rest is history.”
Funding for the research was provided by a COBRE Pilot grant to Drs. Stevenson and May, and a Behavioral Core grant to Stevenson.
Link to the article abstract (full article is in press, and not available yet)