Changes in Gut, Microbiome, and Cognition after Doxorubicin, Cyclophosphamide, and Paclitaxel Chemotherapy Treatment

In this study, 12-week-old female C57/BL6 mice were treated with 8 once weekly intraperitoneal injections (IP) of Doxorubicin (Dox), Cyclophosphamide (CYP), and Paclitaxel (PTX) (AC-T) or saline. 30 days after the last AC-T injection, mice underwent the three-chamber sociability test to assess social behavior and social memory. AC-T treated mice spent equal time with both the novel and the stranger mouse, indicating a deficit in social memory. There were significant reductions in alpha diversity (Shannon entropy and Pielou's evenness) in AC-T treatments compared to saline treatments. Significant differences in beta diversity were also observed for all metrics: Jaccard, Bray-Curtis, Unweighted and Weighted UniFrac. Differential abundance analysis also showed over a dozen genera significantly enriched & depleted between the two treatment groups.