Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Association of Blast Exposure in Military Breaching with Intestinal Permeability Blood Biomarkers Associated with Leaky Gut

Qingkun Liu
,
Zhaoyu Wang
,
Shengnan Sun
ORCID logo ,
Jeffrey Nemes
,
Lisa Brenner
,
Andrew Hoisington
,
Maciej Skotak
,
Christina R. LaValle
,
Yongchao Ge
,
Walter Carr
,
Fatemeh Haghighi
*
Version 1 : Received: 22 January 2024 / Approved: 24 January 2024 / Online: 25 January 2024 (09:35:16 CET)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Liu, Q.; Wang, Z.; Sun, S.; Nemes, J.; Brenner, L.A.; Hoisington, A.; Skotak, M.; LaValle, C.R.; Ge, Y.; Carr, W.; et al. Association of Blast Exposure in Military Breaching with Intestinal Permeability Blood Biomarkers Associated with Leaky Gut. International Journal of Molecular Sciences 2024, 25, 3549, doi:10.3390/ijms25063549. Liu, Q.; Wang, Z.; Sun, S.; Nemes, J.; Brenner, L.A.; Hoisington, A.; Skotak, M.; LaValle, C.R.; Ge, Y.; Carr, W.; et al. Association of Blast Exposure in Military Breaching with Intestinal Permeability Blood Biomarkers Associated with Leaky Gut. International Journal of Molecular Sciences 2024, 25, 3549, doi:10.3390/ijms25063549.

Abstract

Injuries from exposure to blasts are of significant concern in military operational settings, including tactical training, and is associated with self-reported concussion-like symptomology and physiological changes as increased intestinal permeability (IP) investigated herein. Timeseries gene expression and IP biomarker data were generated from “breachers” exposed to controlled, low-level explosive blast during training. Samples from 30 male participants at pre, post, follow-up blast exposure the next day were assayed via RNA-seq and ELISA. A battery of symptom data was also collected at each of these time points that acutely showed elevated symptom reporting related to headache, concentration, dizziness, and slowed thinking, dissipating ~16hrs following blast exposure. Evidence for bacterial translocation into circulation following blast exposure was detected by significant stepwise increase in microbial diversity (measured via alpha-diversity p=0.049). Alterations in levels of IP protein biomarkers (i.e., Zonulin, LBP, Claudin-3, I-FABP) assessed in a subset of these participants (n=23) further evidenced blast exposure associates with IP. The observed symptom profile was consistent with mTBI and was further associated with changes in bacterial translocation and intestinal permeability, suggesting that IP may be linked to a decrease in cognitive performance. These preliminary findings show for the first

Keywords

Intestinal permeability; leaky gut; blast; military; mTBI; brain-gut axis; microbiome

Subject

Biology and Life Sciences, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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