Clinical Implications of Circulating Microbiome in Cardiovascular Disease Patients

The circulating microbiome or the blood microbiome has been analysed recently in chronic inflammatory diseases like obesity, diabetes, cirrhosis and cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) in humans. Evidences that microbial components in blood could play a crucial role in the pathophysiological events leading to or during the course of disease continue to mount. The blood microbiome has been investigated primarily by profiling the circulating bacterial and viral elements using high-throughput sequencing technologies. However, the clinical implications of circulating microbiome in humans remain largely unexplored. The evidence for the presence of a stable blood microbiome in CVDs is still questionable. Nevertheless, there is evidence for a link between the circulating microbiome in obesity, diabetes and CVDs, indicating the influence of physiological, biochemical and environmental factors on the circulating microbiome in metabolic diseases. With this background, we explore the reports on the clinical consequences of bacteremia in CVD patients which formed the basis for the analyses on the topic “circulating microbiome”.