Aim
The main aim of “Antibiotic-induced changes in the resistome of patients with chronic low back pain” is to investigate the effect of prolonged exposure to amoxicillin on the resistome and microbiome of the salivary and fecal microbial community.
Trial
Long term antibiotic treatment is a new treatment strategy for patients with low back pain and vertebral endplate changes visible on MRI (Modic changes). However, there have been controversies regarding treatment efficacy. In a recent multicenter study conducted in Norway, the results showed that there were no clinically significant differences between the antibiotic group and the placebo group in reported disability, pain intensity or quality of life at one year follow-up. Neither were there any clinically relevant differences in subgroups of patients, defined by the type of Modic changes or clinical information. As a part of this trial, saliva and fecal samples were collected to assess the impact of long term exposure of antibiotics (amoxicillin for 100 days) on the oral microbiome and resistome.
Effects of long term exposure to antibiotics
In this project, we are using next generation deep sequencing and functional metagenomics to describe the effects of long term exposure of amoxicillin on the taxonomic and antimicrobial resistance profiles in the microbiome of patients that participated in this multicenter project.