The Analysis of Association of Retinopathy of Prematurity, Gut Microbiome Profile, and Systemic Inflammation

Background In recent decades, severeretinopathy of prematurity (ROP) and the proportion of ROP needing treatment is increasing. These conditions are due to the fact that more premature infants now could surviveowing to the improvement in neonatology. Since ROP isa leading cause of blindness in children, how to deal with these severely affected eyes becomes a major challenge.

In recent years, growing evidence support that exposure to infection and inflammation increases risk of ROP and these exposures are considered key contributors to the pathogenesis of ROP. These exposures, which are modifiable, have gained interest among researchers.

The microbiome are symbiotic organisms living inside human bodies. They are most abundant in human gastrointestinal tracts and play a fundamental role in host inflammatory and immunity physiology. The gut microbiome is most extensively studied, and reports showed that they play a role not only in gastrointestinal inflammatory diseases, but also in extra-gastrointestinal conditions.

Recent data have shown that microbiome changes may involve in the pathogenesisof ophthalmic diseasessuch as uveitis, but its role in ROP has not been explored. Since ROP is closely related to inflammation, and that the gut microbiome has a significant role in the modulation of both systemic and ocular inflammatory pathways, we are interested to know whether there is association between ROP, microbiome, and systemic inflammation. Whether the microbiome profile is different in ROP and no-ROP neonates is worth exploring. Also, it is important to see whether the onset of ROP is related to the systemic inflammation status. To the best of our knowledge, there are no report on such topic, therefore our current study is designed to answer this question.

Methods Very low birth weight preterm infantsborn in our hospital from August 2020to July 2023 will be enrolled into study. Infants who has major or congenital GI anomaly will be excluded. ROP screening protocol and categorization will follow the international standards. DNA will be extracted from the stool samples and underwent microbiome profiling either by 16S rRNA or shotgun metagenomic sequencing. Blood samples from the routine blood examinations will beanalyzed by an immunoassay to reveal the level of systemic inflammation (IL-1 alpha/beta, IL-10, IL-13 and so on). Statistical analysis will be performed and the associations among ROP features, gut microbiome, and serum inflammatory cytokines will be explored.