Students from the Stevenson lab present poster at Experimental Biology national meeting

Emily Payne (Medical Biology, ’19), Rebecca Brackin (Neuroscience, ’19) and Kylee Harrington (Neuroscience, ’20) recently presented their poster at the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics/Experimental Biology annual meeting in Orlando, Florida.

 All three students are current full-time research assistants in the behavioral pharmacology laboratory of Glenn W. Stevenson, Ph.D., professor of psychology and program coordinator of the Neuroscience Major.

The students presented data showing that some antibiotics modulate the gut microbiome and that this microbiota shift reversed an inflammatory persistent pain condition that varied as a function of voluntary exercise in rats.

Fecal microbiota transplanted from healthy “pro-biotic” donors, a therapeutic procedure used in veterinary and human clinics, did not reverse the antibiotic-induced modification to pain.

The procedure did, however, block pain alone, suggesting different nervous system, endocrine, or immune mechanisms may be at play.

The experiments highlight the profound effects that antibiotic treatment can have on pain-related behaviors and local inflammation.

The experiments were completed in collaboration with Kyle Bittinger, Ph.D., Lisa Mattei, Ph.D., and Jung-Jin Lee,  Ph.D., at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Microbiome Program. UNE collaborators included Meghan May, Ph.D., associate professor of microbiology and infectious disease, and Tamara King, Ph.D., assistant professor in the College of Osteopathic Medicine, and technicians Courtney Rieder and Sebastien Sannajust.

Additional students from the Stevenson lab were also involved in the studies including Jacob Liff (Neuroscience, ’19), Liz Mutina (Medical Biology, ’19), Ravin Davis (Neuroscience, ’21) and Francesca Asmus (Neuroscience, ’22).

Funding for all experiments was provided by a COBRE pilot award to Stevenson.