Koch's postulates, microbial dysbiosis and inflammatory bowel disease

V P Singh; S D Proctor; B P Willing

doi:10.1016/j.cmi.2016.04.018

Koch's postulates, microbial dysbiosis and inflammatory bowel disease

Clin Microbiol Infect. 2016 Jul;22(7):594-9. doi: 10.1016/j.cmi.2016.04.018. Epub 2016 May 11.

Authors

V P Singh¹, S D Proctor¹, B P Willing²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada; Metabolic and Cardiovascular Diseases Laboratory, Alberta Institute of Human Nutrition, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
² Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. Electronic address: willing@ualberta.ca.

PMID: 27179648
DOI: 10.1016/j.cmi.2016.04.018

Abstract

Over the past 20 years, a growing amount of evidence supports the role of microbes and an imbalanced microbiota in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). While many reviews have been written on the microbiota in IBD, few have considered how they fulfil the Koch's postulates. In this review, we consider how the Koch's postulates might be modified so that they can be fulfilled for polymicrobial diseases, and we discuss the progress made to date in fulfilling them.

Keywords: Crohn disease; Dysbiosis; Inflammatory bowel disease; Koch's postulates; Ulcerative colitis.

Publication types

Review

MeSH terms

Causality*
Coinfection / pathology*
Dysbiosis / complications*
Humans
Inflammatory Bowel Diseases / etiology*
Microbiological Techniques / methods*
Microbiology / standards*