Highlights
- •Vancomycin (VANC) attenuated pain-stimulated behaviors in female Fischer rats
- •VANC also prevented pain-depressed wheel running in female Fischer rats
- •The VANC treatment effect was associated with a specific gut amino acid profile
Abstract
The present experiments determined the effects of the narrow-spectrum antibiotic vancomycin
on inflammatory pain-stimulated and pain-depressed behaviors in rats. Persistent inflammatory
pain was modeled using dilute formalin (0.5%). Two weeks of oral vancomycin administered
in drinking water attenuated Phase II formalin pain-stimulated behavior, and prevented
formalin pain-depressed wheel running. Fecal microbiota transplantation produced a
non-significant trend toward reversal of the vancomycin effect on pain-stimulated
behavior. Vancomycin depleted Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes populations in the gut while having a partial sparing effect on Lactobacillus species and Clostridiales. The vancomycin treatment effect was associated with an altered profile in amino
acid concentrations in the gut with increases in arginine, glycine, alanine, proline,
valine, leucine, and decreases in tyrosine and methionine. These results indicate
that vancomycin may have therapeutic effects against persistent inflammatory pain
conditions that are distal to the gut.
Perspective
The narrow-spectrum antibiotic vancomycin reduces pain-related behaviors in the formalin
model of inflammatory pain. These data suggest that manipulation of the gut microbiome
may be one method to attenuate inflammatory pain amplitude.
Key words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: May 21, 2021
Accepted:
May 15,
2021
Received in revised form:
May 2,
2021
Received:
November 20,
2020
Footnotes
Disclosures: This research was supported by an NIH COBRE grant (P20GM103643) to Dr. Ian Meng, a COBRE pilot-project grant to G.W.S., and a COBRE animal behavior core facility.
Competing Interests: The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article
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© 2021 by United States Association for the Study of Pain, Inc.
