Editorial: Rodent model organisms: therapeutic treatments and drugs interaction with the gut microbiome

Abstract

The microbiome plays a crucial role in our health, unlocking microbial ecosystems (Stavropoulou et al., 2021a). Microbiome research is a dynamic and evolving field that investigates microbial communities and their interconnections (Stavropoulou et al., 2021b). The interactions of the human microbiome, particularly the gut microbiome, has been extensively studied due to its substantial impact on health (Tsigalou et al., 2018). Research shows that intestinal microbes participate in digestive processes, synthesize vitamins and enzymes, and regulate immunity, inflammatory processes, and microbial balance (Fu et al., 2023; Mangan et al., 2018). Breakdown of microbial balance is associated with multiple disease states, such as diabetes (Li et al., 2020), obesity (Aoun et al., 2020), autoimmune diseases (Mousa et al., 2022), periodontitis (Abdulkareem et al., 2023), stress (Guan et al., 2017), while it can significantly affect drug metabolism (Dodd and Cann, 2022) and individual patient responses (Ma et al., 2024). Microbiome-based therapies (Yadav and Chauhan, 2022), such as probiotics (Stavropoulou and Bezirtzoglou, 2020), prebiotics (Yadav and Chauhan, 2022), and fecal microbiome transplantation (Liu X. et al.) influence the microbiome and favorably balance it in clinical applications. Personalized medicine (Kashyap et al.,2017) may soon harness microbiome-tailored therapies, but bioethical issues, such as microbiome ownership and data privacy, require attention. Despite the progress in microbiome research, challenges still remain, as microbiomes depend on many factors, such as diet, genetics, lifestyle, and environment (Dong and Gupta, 2019).