Arginine-mediated gut microbiome remodeling promotes host pulmonary immune defense against nontuberculous mycobacterial infection

Abstract

Nontuberculous mycobacterial pulmonary diseases (NTM-PDs) are emerging as global health threats with issues of antibiotic resistance. Accumulating evidence suggests that the gut-lung axis may provide novel candidates for host-directed therapeutics against various infectious diseases. However, little is known about the gut-lung axis in the context of host protective immunity to identify new therapeutics for NTM-PDs. This study was performed to identify gut microbes and metabolites capable of conferring pulmonary immunity to NTM-PDs. Using metabolomics analysis of sera from NTM-PD patients and mouse models, we showed that the levels of l-arginine were decreased in sera from NTM-PD patients and NTM-infected mice. Oral administration of l-arginine significantly enhanced pulmonary antimicrobial activities with the expansion of IFN-γ-producing effector T cells and a shift to microbicidal (M1) macrophages in the lungs of NTM-PD model mice. Mice that received fecal microbiota transplants from l-arginine-treated mice showed increased protective host defense in the lungs against NTM-PD, whereas l-arginine-induced pulmonary host defense was attenuated in mice treated with antibiotics. Using 16S rRNA sequencing, we further showed that l-arginine administration resulted in enrichment of the gut microbiota composition with <i>Bifidobacterium</i> species. Notably, oral treatment with either <i>Bifidobacterium pseudolongum</i> or inosine enhanced antimicrobial pulmonary immune defense against NTM infection, even with multidrug-resistant clinical NTM strains. Our findings indicate that l-arginine-induced gut microbiota remodeling with enrichment of <i>B. pseudolongum</i> boosts pulmonary immune defense against NTM infection by driving the protective gut-lung axis <i>in vivo</i>.