Blood loss leads to increase in relative abundance of opportunistic pathogens in the gut microbiome of rabbits

We used NewZealand rabbits to create a blood loss complication and designed a five-time-point fecal sampling strategy including 24-hour pre-blood loss treatment, 24-hour, 36-hour, 48-hour and 1-week post-blood loss treatment. Gut microbiome composition and diversity were analyzed using 16S rRNA V1-V2 gene sequencing and downstream a-diversity, ß-diversity, and taxonomy analysis. This study aims to determine whether acute blood loss affects the gut microbiome and the dynamic variation of the gut microbiome following the loss of blood.