1. Differential effects of synthetic psychoactive cathinones and amphetamine stimulants on the gut microbiome in mice
- Author
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Kevin R. Theis, Jonathan M. Greenberg, Donald M. Kuhn, Madison M. Ahmad, Andrew D. Winters, Branislava Zagorac, and Mariana Angoa-Pérez
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,Social Sciences ,Pharmacology ,Biochemistry ,Methcathinone ,Designer Drugs ,Methamphetamine ,Drug Abuse ,Mice ,0302 clinical medicine ,RNA, Ribosomal, 16S ,Medicine and Health Sciences ,Psychology ,Data Management ,media_common ,Propiophenones ,Collection Review ,Multidisciplinary ,Ecology ,Pharmaceutics ,Drugs ,Genomics ,Nucleic acids ,Ribosomal RNA ,Medical Microbiology ,Behavioral Pharmacology ,Models, Animal ,Medicine ,Female ,Simpson Index ,Microbial Taxonomy ,medicine.drug ,DNA, Bacterial ,Drug ,Computer and Information Sciences ,Cell biology ,Cellular structures and organelles ,Drug Synthesis ,Ecological Metrics ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Science ,Microbial Genomics ,Microbiology ,03 medical and health sciences ,Mephedrone ,Drug Therapy ,Recreational Drug Use ,Genetics ,medicine ,Animals ,Microbiome ,Non-coding RNA ,Amphetamine ,Taxonomy ,Psychotropic Drugs ,Behavior ,Pharmaceutical Processing Technology ,business.industry ,Addiction ,Amphetamines ,Ecology and Environmental Sciences ,Biology and Life Sciences ,Species Diversity ,Gastrointestinal Microbiome ,030104 developmental biology ,RNA ,business ,Ribosomes ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery ,Bath salts - Abstract
The list of pharmacological agents that can modify the gut microbiome or be modified by it continues to grow at a high rate. The greatest amount of attention on drug-gut microbiome interactions has been directed primarily at pharmaceuticals used to treat infection, diabetes, cardiovascular conditions and cancer. By comparison, drugs of abuse and addiction, which can powerfully and chronically worsen human health, have received relatively little attention in this regard. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to characterize how selected synthetic psychoactive cathinones (aka “Bath Salts”) and amphetamine stimulants modify the gut microbiome. Mice were treated with mephedrone (40 mg/kg), methcathinone (80 mg/kg), methamphetamine (5 mg/kg) or 4-methyl-methamphetamine (40 mg/kg), following a binge regimen consisting of 4 injections at 2h intervals. These drugs were selected for study because they are structural analogs that contain a β-keto substituent (methcathinone), a 4-methyl group (4-methyl-methamphetamine), both substituents (mephedrone) or neither (methamphetamine). Mice were sacrificed 1, 2 or 7 days after treatment and DNA from caecum contents was subjected to 16S rRNA sequencing. We found that all drugs caused significant time- and structure-dependent alterations in the diversity and taxonomic structure of the gut microbiome. The two phyla most changed by drug treatments were Firmicutes (methcathinone, 4-methyl-methamphetamine) and Bacteriodetes (methcathinone, 4-methyl-methamphetamine, methamphetamine, mephedrone). Across time, broad microbiome changes from the phylum to genus levels were characteristic of all drugs. The present results signify that these selected psychoactive drugs, which are thought to exert their primary effects within the CNS, can have profound effects on the gut microbiome. They also suggest new avenues of investigation into the possibility that gut-derived signals could modulate drug abuse and addiction via altered communication along the gut-brain axis.
- Published
- 2020