Gut Microbiota Influences Plasmodium Falciparum Malaria Susceptibility

Abstract

The gut microbiota has recently been associated with susceptibility/resistance to malaria in animal models and humans, yet the impact of the gut microbiota on the risk of a malaria attack remains to be assessed. This study aims at assessing the influence of the gut microbiota on malaria attacks and Plasmodium parasitæmia in children living in a malaria-endemic area in Mali. Three hundred healthy children were included in a 16-months cohort study in Bandiagara. Their gut bacteria and fungi community structures were characterised via 16S and ITS metabarcoding from stool samples collected at inclusion. Clinician team monitored the occurrence of malaria attacks. Asymptomatic carriage of Plasmodium was assessed by qPCR. Over the 16-month period, 107 (36%) children experienced at least one occurrence of malaria attacks, and 82 (27%) at least one asymptomatic Plasmodium parasitæmia episode. A higher gut bacteria richness was independently associated with susceptibility to asymptomatic parasitæmia episodes and malaria attacks; while the Shannon H diversity and Chao-1 richness index of gut fungi community structure was relatively homogeneous in children who were and were not infected with P. falciparum. Using a linear discriminant effect size analysis of operational taxonomic units assigned to the species level, 17 bacteria, including Clostridiaceae, Eubacteriaceae, Senegalimassilia sp., Atopobiaceae and Lachnosipraceae, and seven fungi, including Dioszegia fristigensis, Ogataea polymorpha and Cutaneotrichosporon cyanovorans, were associated with susceptibility; whereas eight bacteria, including, Bifidobacterium spp., Weissela confusa and Peptostreptococcacea, and 3 fungi, Malassezia sp., Niesslia exosporoides, and Didymocrea leucaenae, were associated with resistance to malaria. Moreover, 15 bacteria, including Coproccus eutactus, Terrisporobacter petrolearius, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Ruminococcaceae, and 13 fungi, including Wallemia mellicola, were associated with susceptibility, whereas 19 bacteria, including Bifidobacterium spp., Bacteroides fragilis, Peptostreptococcacea, and Lactobacillus ruminis, and three fungi, including Cryptococcus neoformans, were associated with resistance to asymptomatic Plasmodium parasitæmia episodes. Further studies are needed to confirm these findings that point the way towards strategies aiming to reduce the risk of malaria by modulating gut microbiota components in at-risk populations.

Assessment of causal associations among gut microbiota, metabolites, and celiac disease: a bidirectional Mendelian randomization study

“…The phylum Lentisphaerae was proposed in 2004 after the isolation of two marine strains (Cho et al, 2004) and is a member of the Planctomycetes-Verrucomicrobia-Chlamydiae superphylum. Decreased abundance of Lentisphaerae was observed in patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (Hemmings et al, 2017), multiple sclerosis (Castillo-Álvarez et al, 2021), and autoimmune hepatitis (Kodio et al, 2019;Lou et al, 2020), while an increased abundance of this strain was observed in Blastocystis-colonized children (Kodio et al, 2019) and rosacea patients (Chen et al, 2021). In this study, a greater abundance of Lentisphaerae (OR = 0.798, 95% CI: 0.648-0.982, p = 0.034) was significantly related to lower CD risk.…”

Population dynamics of Malassezia species on the skin of HIV-infected patients

“…PCR cycling conditions were as follows: 95°C for 3 min, 45 cycles of 95°C for 30 s, 55°C for 30 s, and 72°C for 30 s, followed by a 5 min nal extension step at 72°C. PCR products were then puri ed on AMPure beads (Beckman Coulter Inc, Fullerton, CA, USA), quanti ed using High sensitivity Qubit technology (Beckman Coulter Inc, Fullerton, CA,USA), pooled and barcoded before sequencing for ITS and 16S rRNA on a MiSeq system (Illumina, Inc, San Diego CA 92121, USA) with paired end strategy as previously described (Kodio et al, 2019(Kodio et al, , 2021.…”

“…The bioinformatics analyses of the ITS reads were performed using the PIPITS automated pipeline that was developed for the analysis of ITS sequences from Illumina sequencing (Gweon et al, 2015). The obtained OTU table was completed by manually analysing the sequences obtained of the operational taxonomic units (OTU) from the ITS1 and ITS2 regions via the standard Basic Local Alignment nucleotide Search Tool (BLASTN) search as previously described (Kodio et al, 2021). The criteria for taxonomic assignment of fungal OTUs were established as follows: PID (percentage of identity) > 97% assignment to species level; PID between 95 and 97%: assignment to genus; PID between 90 and 95%: assignment to the family; PID below 90%: assignment to the kingdom.…”

Malian Children’s Core Gut Mycobiome

“…We used both the ITS1 and ITS barcode and two hybridization temperatures in triplicates to maximize the diversity of the fungal reads. All the amplification procedures and the steps of the Illumina MiSeq sequencing until the production of the reads have been previously described [9]. Briefly, the amplification reaction mix consisted of 12.5 µL AmpliTaq Gold master mix, 0.75 µL of each primer with Illumina sequencing adapters (Eurogentec, Seraing, Belgium), 6 µL distilled water and 5 µL DNA template for 25 µL volume.…”

“…Whether this is common to all African children remains unknown. To address this knowledge gap, the present study aimed to describe the fungal gut community structure of African children by reanalysing ITS metabarcoding data from a study on the influence of microbiota in malaria susceptibility in Malian children [9]. The objectives of this ancillary study were: (1) to determine the core gut mycobiome of Malian children, and (2) to examine the effect of age by comparing breastfed children aged 0-2 years with other age groups via ITS metabarcoding.…”