Exposure to parasitic protists and helminths changes the intestinal community structure of bacterial microbiota but not of eukaryotes in a cohort of mother-child binomial from a semi-rural setting in Mexico
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Around 3.5 billion people are colonized by intestinal parasites worldwide. Intestinal parasitic eukaryotes interact not only with the host, but also with the intestinal microbiota. In this work, we studied the relationship between the presence of multiple enteric parasites and the community structure of the bacterial and eukaryote intestinal microbiota in an asymptomatic cohort of mother-child binomials from a semi-rural community in Mexico. The intestinal parasites identified were Blastocystis hominis, Entamoeba histolytica/dispar, Endolimax nana, Chilomastix mesnili, Iodamoeba butshlii, Entamoeba coli, Hymenolepis nana and Ascaris lumbricoides. We sequenced bacterial 16S rDNA and eukaryotic 18S rDNA in fecal samples of 46 mothers and their respective children, with ages ranging from two to twenty months. Although we did not find significant alpha-diversity changes, we found a significant effect of parasite exposure on bacterial beta-diversity, which explained between 5.2% and 15.0% of the variation of the bacterial community structure. Additionally, exposure to parasites was associated with significant changes in relative abundances of bacterial taxa, characterized by increases in the Clostridia and decreased Actinobacteria and Bacteroidia abundances. There were no significant changes of intestinal microeukaryote abundances associated with parasite exposure. However, we found several significant positive correlations between intestinal bacteria and eukaryotes, including co-occurrence of the fungi Candida tropicalis with Bacteroides and Actinomyces, and Saccharomycetales with Bifidobacterium and Prevotella copri. These bacterial community structure changes associated with parasite exposure imply effects on microbial metabolic routes, host nutrient uptake abilities and intestinal immunity regulation in host-parasite interactions. IMPORTANCE The impact of intestinal eukaryotes on the prokaryotic microbiome composition of asymptomatic carriers has not been extensively explored, especially in children and in hosts with multiple parasites. In this work, we studied the relationship between protist and helminth parasite colonization and intestinal microbiota structure in an asymptomatic population of mother-child binomials from the semi-rural community of Morelos in Mexico. We found that the presence of parasitic eukaryotes correlated with changes in the bacterial community structure in the intestinal microbiota in an age-dependent way. This was characterized by an increase of the relative abundance of the class Clostridia and the decrease of Actinobacteria and Bacteroidia. While there were no significant associations between the presence of parasites and microeukaryote community structure, we observed strong positive correlations between bacterial and eukaryote taxa, identifying novel relationships between prokaryotes and fungi, and reflecting the diet of the human population studied.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".