Tapering Courses of Oral Vancomycin Induce Persistent Disruption of the Microbiota that Provide Colonization Resistance to Clostridium difficile and Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococci in Mice.

Link to article at PubMed

Tapering Courses of Oral Vancomycin Induce Persistent Disruption of the Microbiota that Provide Colonization Resistance to Clostridium difficile and Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococci in Mice.

Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2018 Mar 12;:

Authors: Tomas ME, Mana TSC, Wilson BM, Nerandzic MM, Samira J, Quinones-Mateu M, Donskey CJ

Abstract
Vancomycin taper regimens are commonly used for the treatment of recurrent Clostridium difficile infections. One rationale for tapering and pulsing of the dose at the end of therapy is to reduce the selective pressure of vancomycin on the indigenous intestinal microbiota. Here, we used a mouse model to test the hypothesis that the indigenous microbiota that provide colonization resistance against C. difficile and vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) is re-populated during tapering courses of vancomycin. Mice were treated orally with vancomycin daily for 10 days, vancomycin in a tapering dose for 42 days, fidaxomicin for 10 days, or saline. To assess colonization resistance, subsets of mice were challenged with 104 colony-forming units of C. difficile or VRE at multiple time points during and after completion of treatment. The impact of the treatments on the microbiome was measured by cultures, real-time PCR for selected anaerobic bacteria, and deep sequencing. Vancomycin taper-treated mice developed alterations of the microbiota and disruption of colonization resistance that was persistent 18 days after treatment. In contrast, mice treated with a 10-day course of vancomycin exhibited recovery of the microbiota and of colonization resistance by 15 days after treatment, and fidaxomicin-treated mice maintained intact colonization resistance. These findings demonstrate that alteration of the indigenous microbiota responsible for colonization resistance to C. difficile and VRE persist during and after completion of tapering courses of vancomycin.

PMID: 29530853 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

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