Dissection of the gut microbiota in mothers and children with chronic Trichuris trichiura infection in Pemba Island, Tanzania

Abstract

Background Soil-transmitted helminthiases are important neglected tropical diseases that result in a notably high number of disability-adjusted life years worldwide. Characterizing the interactions between the human intestinal microbiome and helminths is of interest in the development of alternative treatments that do not rely on chemotherapeutics and do not lead to drug resistance. Methods We recruited and obtained fecal samples from 32 pairs of mothers and children on Pemba Island and monitored their intestinal microbiota using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Results We observed that microbial changes occur in the gut microbiota of infected mothers and children. Some short-chain fatty acid (SCFA)-producing bacteria and carbohydrate-degrading bacteria exhibited lower abundance in the infected individuals. Potentially pathogenic Campylobacter and proinflammatory Methanobrevibacter in infected mothers and opportunistic Enterococcus in infected children exhibited greater abundance. Conclusions Our findings could reveal the microbiota profiling in T. trichiura-infected individuals, indicate the potential roles of key microbiota in the host and aid to the development of novel strategies to control T. trichiura infection. Graphic abstract

Gut Microbiome of Helminth Infected Indigenous Malaysians Is Context Dependent

“…In this metagenomic study, we found that intestinal helminth infection status was associated with higher species richness, which was consistent with our previous findings and others conducted using 16s rRNA sequencing [10, 12, 13, 17, 30, 32]. However, we did not find a significant difference at Pre and Post deworming, which could be because of smaller sample size and could also be confounded by the effects of albendazole.…”

“…These divergent conclusions could be attributed to different confounders from different geographical locations (e.g. Malaysia [7, 13], Indonesia [10], Liberia [10], Tanzania [12], Western Kenya [11] and Ecuador [14]), different prevalence of helminth species (e.g. Trichuris sp.…”

“…While the effect of helminth colonisation on the human gut microbiota has been increasingly studied, the results reported have been inconsistent. Some studies find that helminth colonization changes gut microbial diversity and composition and/or a shift in abundance of certain bacterial taxa [7][8][9][10][11][12][13], while others show no apparent changes in gut microbial profiles [14,15]. These divergent conclusions could be attributed to different confounders from different geographical locations (e.g.…”

The interplay between Trichuris and the microbiota

“…The importance of the microbiota during helminth infection is becoming increasingly recognized, and is also the start of an exciting and crucial area of parasitological research. Microbial changes have been reported for multiple intestinal helminths including infections with Ascaris lumbricoides (Ramírez-Carrillo et al ., 2020 ), H. polygyrus (Walk et al ., 2010 ; Kreisinger et al , 2015 ), Necator americanus (hookworm; Cantacessi et al ., 2014 ) and of interest for this review T. trichiura (Lee et al ., 2014 ; Chen et al ., 2021 ) and T. muris (Holm et al ., 2015 ; Houlden et al ., 2015 ; Schachter et al ., 2020 ).…”

“…It is possible that the conflicting data in human field studies, and their comparison to mouse models are due to the fact that infected individuals are rarely exposed to a single, low-dose helminth infection but rather continuous re-occurring infection by the same or multiple parasites. A recent study in Tanzania, was one of the first to identify a reduction in the abundance of gut bacteria: Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria associated with a cohort of women and children solely infected with T. trichuria (Chen et al, 2021); which is similar to the microbial changes reported in mouse studies (Holm et al, 2015;Houlden et al, 2015). Parallels between human and mouse studies were further addressed by identifying bacterial taxa that increased in both T. trichuria-only infected Indonesian individuals and T. muris-infected mice, these genera included Bacteroides, Collinsella, Subdoligranulum, Escherichia/Shigella, Prevetoella and Streptococcus (Rosa et al, 2021).…”