Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Research Highlight
  • Published:

GUT MICROBIOTA

Gut microbiota-mediated liver inflammation in PSC

Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology volume 16, pages 140–141 (2019)Cite this article

Subjects

The inflammatory liver disease primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) is often associated with ulcerative colitis (PSC–UC). A new study has shed light on this association, showing that specific gut bacteria can disrupt gut barrier integrity and then initiate inflammatory responses in the liver following translocation.

“First, we used a gnotobiotic system with faecal samples from patients with PSC–UC to reveal the direct contribution of specific bacteria to bacterial translocation and the subsequent immune priming in the liver,” explains Nakamoto. The investigators found increased serum levels of endotoxin and TH17 priming in the livers of mice inoculated with faecal samples from patients with PSC–UC, but not in mice with microbiota from healthy individuals. Bacterial culturing of the mesenteric lymph nodes from the PSC–UC humanized mice isolated Klebsiella pneumoniae, Proteus mirabilis and Enterococcus gallinarum, which were also found to be prevalent in faecal samples from patients (n = 18) with PSC–UC.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

Original article

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology http://www.nature.com/nrgastro/

    Iain Dickson

Authors
  1. Iain Dickson
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Iain Dickson.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Dickson, I. Gut microbiota-mediated liver inflammation in PSC. Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol 16, 140–141 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41575-019-0116-z

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Version of record:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41575-019-0116-z

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing