The Gut Microbiome and Alcoholic Liver Disease: Ethanol Consumption Drives Consistent and Reproducible Alteration in Gut Microbiota in Mice

Abstract

Phenotypic health effects, both positive and negative, have been well studied in association with the consumption of alcohol in humans as well as several other mammals including mice. Many studies have also associated these same health effects and phenotypes to specific members of gut microbiome communities. Here we utilized a chronic plus binge ethanol feed model (Gao-binge model) to explore microbiome community changes across three independent experiments performed in mice. We found significant and reproducible differences in microbiome community assemblies between ethanol-treated mice and control mice on the same diet absent of ethanol. We also identified significant differences in gut microbiota occurring temporally with ethanol treatment. Peak shift in communities was observed 4 days after the start of daily alcohol consumption. We quantitatively identified many of the bacterial genera indicative of these ethanol-induced shifts including 20 significant genera when comparing ethanol treatments with controls and 14 significant genera based on temporal investigation. Including overlap of treatment with temporal shifts, we identified 25 specific genera of interest in ethanol treatment microbiome shifts. Shifts coincide with observed presentation of fatty deposits in the liver tissue, i.e., Alcoholic Liver Disease-associated phenotype. The evidence presented herein, derived from three independent experiments, points to the existence of a common, reproducible, and characterizable “mouse ethanol gut microbiome”.

Keywords

• gut microbiome
• microbial ecology
• indicator species
• bacterial communities
• mouse model
• alcohol effects