A physicians' wish list for the clinical application of intestinal metagenomics

Ingeborg Klymiuk; Christoph Högenauer; Bettina Halwachs; Gerhard G Thallinger; W Florian Fricke; Christoph Steininger

doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001627

A physicians' wish list for the clinical application of intestinal metagenomics

PLoS Med. 2014 Apr 15;11(4):e1001627. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001627. eCollection 2014 Apr.

Authors

Ingeborg Klymiuk¹, Christoph Högenauer², Bettina Halwachs³, Gerhard G Thallinger³, W Florian Fricke⁴, Christoph Steininger⁵

Affiliations

¹ Core Facility Molecular Biology, Center for Medical Research, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
² Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
³ Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria; Core Facility Bioinformatics, Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology, Graz, Austria.
⁴ Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Institute for Genome Sciences, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America.
⁵ Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine I, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.

Abstract

Christoph Steininger and colleagues explore how multiple infectious, autoimmune, metabolic, and neoplastic diseases have been associated with changes in the intestinal microbiome, although a cause-effect relationship is often difficult to establish. Integration of metagenomics into clinical medicine is a challenge, and the authors highlight clinical approaches that are of high priority for the useful medical application of metagenomics. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Humans
Intestines / microbiology*
Metagenomics*
Microbiota*

Grants and funding

The Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology (ACIB) contribution was supported by FFG, BMWFJ, BMVIT, ZIT GmbH, Zukunftsstiftung Tirol and Land Steiermark within the Austrian COMET program FFG Grant 824186 (BH, GGT) and the EU COST Action SeqAhead, EC Grant BM1006 (GGT). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.