Jeffrey Salomon, MBA, MD

I am a pediatric critical care physician at Children’s Nebraska and an Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and the Department of Physiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. My research focuses on changes to the microbiome in congenital heart disease. Recognizing that changes to the microbiome in critical illness influence outcomes, I began to ask if similar changes in patients with altered gut perfusion or low oxygen states associated with congenital heart defects have similar alterations in their gut flora. As cardiopulmonary bypass causes significant inflammation following cardiac surgery, these changes to the microbiome, could influence patient outcomes.
My goals are to understand the mechanistic role the intestinal microbiome and metabolome have in both local and systemic inflammatory signaling as well as develop therapeutics to improve gut health in children with congenital heart disease and improve patient outcomes.

I also partner with other investigators evaluating a variety of disease populations to understand the role of dysbiosis and pathophysiology. The impact of the microbiome on a variety of disease states continues to grow, but little has been invested into pediatric disease processes, such drug metabolism and graft versus host disease in transplant patients, nutrition in pediatric ARDS, and the microbiome in neurosurgery. Understanding the role of gut health in a variety of diseases has the potential to help a multitude of patients across the spectrum.