Gut Microbes. 2023 Dec;15(2):2267180. doi: 10.1080/19490976.2023.2267180.Epub 2023 Oct 16.

Jun Sun ^1 2, M Nedim Ince ^3 4, Clara Abraham ⁵, Terrence Barrett ^6 7, Lisa A Brenner ^8 9, Yingzi Cong ¹⁰, Reza Dashti ¹¹, Pradeep K Dudeja ^1 2, David Elliott ^3 4, Thomas S Griffith ^12 13, Peter S Heeger ¹⁴, Andrew Hoisington ^8 9, Kaikobad Irani ⁴, Tae Kon Kim ^15 16, Neeraj Kapur ^6 7, Joseph Leventhal ¹⁷, Mansour Mohamadzadeh ¹⁸, Ece Mutlu ¹, Rodney Newberry ¹⁹, Jonathan U Peled ²⁰, Israel Rubinstein ^1 2, Salyka Sengsayadeth, Chen Sabrina Tan ^3 4, Xiao-Di Tan ^1 2, Eric Tkaczyk ⁶, Jason Wertheim ^21 22, Zheng Jenny Zhang ¹⁷

Author information

¹Jesse Brown Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Chicago, IL, USA.

²Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Departments of Medicine, Microbiology/Immunology, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.

³Iowa City Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Lowa city, IA, USA.

⁴Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA.

⁵Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.

⁶Lexington Veterans Affairs Medical Center Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA.

⁷Medicine, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA.

⁸Veterans Affairs Rocky Mountain Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center, Aurora, CO, USA.

⁹Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, CO, USA.

¹⁰Microbiology and Immunology, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Galveston, TX, USA.

¹¹Medicine, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA.

¹²Minneapolis VA Medical Center, Minneapolis, MN, USA.

¹³Urology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.

¹⁴Medicine/Nephrology, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA.

¹⁵Tennessee Valley Healthcare System-Nashville VA, Nashville, TN, USA.

¹⁶Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.

¹⁷Surgery, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.

¹⁸Microbiology, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, USA, TX, San Antonio.

¹⁹Washington University in Saint Louis School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA.

²⁰Adult Bone Marrow Transplantation Service Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA.

²¹Surgery, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.

²²Tucson VA Medical Center, Tucson, AZ, USA.

Abstract

The present report summarizes the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) field-based meeting titled "Modulating microbiome-immune axis in the deployment-related chronic diseases of Veterans." Our Veteran patient population experiences a high incidence of service-related chronic physical and mental health problems, such as infection, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), various forms of hematological and non-hematological malignancies, neurologic conditions, end-stage organ failure, requiring transplantation, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We report the views of a group of scientists who focus on the current state of scientific knowledge elucidating the mechanisms underlying the aforementioned disorders, novel therapeutic targets, and development of new approaches for clinical intervention. In conclusion, we dovetailed on four research areas of interest: 1) microbiome interaction with immune cells after hematopoietic cell and/or solid organ transplantation, graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) and graft rejection, 2) intestinal inflammation and its modification in IBD and cancer, 3) microbiome-neuron-immunity interplay in mental and physical health, and 4) microbiome-micronutrient-immune interactions during homeostasis and infectious diseases. At this VA field-based meeting, we proposed to explore a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional, collaborative strategy to initiate a roadmap, specifically focusing on host microbiome-immune interactions among those with service-related chronic diseases to potentially identify novel and translatable therapeutic targets.