One Health Relationships Between Human, Animal, and Environmental Microbiomes: A Mini-Review

Abstract

The One Health concept stresses the ecological relationships between human, animal, and environmental health. Much of the One Health literature to date has examined the transfer of pathogens from animals (e.g., emerging zoonoses) and the environment to humans. The recent rapid development of technology to perform high throughput DNA sequencing has expanded this view to include the study of entire microbial communities. Applying the One Health approach to the microbiome allows for consideration of both pathogenic and non-pathogenic microbial transfer between humans, animals, and the environment. We review recent research studies of such transmission, the molecular and statistical methods being used, and the implications of such microbiome relationships for human health. Our review identified evidence that the environmental microbiome as well as the microbiome of animals in close contact can affect both the human microbiome and human health outcomes. Such microbiome transfer can take place in the household as well as the workplace setting. Urbanization of built environments leads to changes in the environmental microbiome which could be a factor in human health. While affected by environmental exposures, the human microbiome also can modulate the response to environmental factors through effects on metabolic and immune function. Better understanding of these microbiome interactions between humans, animals, and the shared environment will require continued development of improved statistical and ecological modeling approaches. Such enhanced understanding could lead to innovative interventions to prevent and manage a variety of human health and disease states.

Evaluation of primer pairs for microbiome profiling across a food chain from soils to humans within the One Health framework

“…The inclusion of microbiomes as connecting links between trophic levels has been proposed in the One Health framework (van Bruggen et al, 2019). Before examining microbial transfers from one source compartment to another and implications for health at each level, methodological challenges for detecting and characterising microbiomes from trophic levels along the food chain must be met (Trinh et al, 2018). To overcome such limitations and to achieve a standard microbiome analysis approach, we investigated microbiomes from diverse source compartments along the food chain, using four commonly available primer pairs targeting different regions of 16S rRNA gene.…”

“…During the past decade, however, microbial communities (or microbiomes) have been shown to play important roles in connecting the humans, plants, animals and environment (van Bruggen et al, 2019). Thus, recommendations have been made to extend the One Health concept to include the full breadth of microbes (Bell et al, 2018;Trinh et al, 2018;van Bruggen et al, 2019). Adopting a microbiome perspective may strengthen the One Health concept due to i) the vital services provided by microbiomes to overall ecosystem health, ii) the importance of microbiome processes for the transfer of energy, matter and chemicals between compartments along the food chain, and iii) the important contribution of microbiomes to the health of the different hosts and compartments.…”

“…Adopting a microbiome perspective may strengthen the One Health concept due to i) the vital services provided by microbiomes to overall ecosystem health, ii) the importance of microbiome processes for the transfer of energy, matter and chemicals between compartments along the food chain, and iii) the important contribution of microbiomes to the health of the different hosts and compartments. However, methodological challenges remain to adequately characterize and allow comparison of the different microbiomes in order to track microbial transfer and to quantify the role of microbiomes in food chain health (Trinh et al, 2018).…”

Commensal Neisseria Are Shared between Sexual Partners: Implications for Gonococcal and Meningococcal Antimicrobial Resistance

“…Intimate kissing may be one explanation, but we have not explored alternative means of transmission. Potential mediators of transmission could be via fomites or animals (such as pets), or influences on the oral microbiota by environmental factors, common diet or simultaneous exposure to pathogens, toxins, mouthwashes or antimicrobials [32]. Second, identification of the oral microbiota in this study was based on the amplification of hypervariable regions V5-V7 of the 16S rRNA gene.…”

Symposium report: emerging threats for human health – impact of socioeconomic and climate change on zoonotic diseases in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Russia

“…Approximately 40% of fungi, 50% of bacteria, 70% of protozoa, 80% of viruses and 95% of helminths that infect human beings are zoonotic. Understanding the underlying complex interactions between biological, social, and ecological systems will be key to combat and prevent zoonotic diseases, requiring the "One Health" approach [2,3] which integrates "effort[s] of multiple disciplines working locally, nationally and globally to attain optimal health for people, animals and the environment" (American Veterinary Medical Association [4]). In line with this concept, Lyubov V. Budatsyrenova from the Regional Office of the Russian Federal Service for Surveillance of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor) in the Republic Sakha (Yakutia) opened the scientific sessions of the Symposium with an overview of zoonoses in the Republic of Sakha in a One Health setting.…”