Your gut microbes may influence how well malaria parasites replicate in your body, according to a small study. If confirmed, the findings could mean that altering the gut microbiome can protect people against severe malaria.
Previous studies looking at naturally occurring malaria infections in people have hinted at a possible link between the mix of bacteria in people’s guts and the severity of malaria infections.
at Tulane University in Louisiana and her colleagues looked to test this idea by deliberately infecting people Plasmodium falciparum, one of the protozoan parasites that cause malaria in humans.
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Thirty-five volunteers provided stool samples before allowing themselves to be bitten by mosquitoes carrying P. falciparum. The researchers then compared the bacteria in the volunteers’ faeces with the parasite levels in their blood at the peak of infection.
People with a microbiome high in Catenibacterium and low in Bifidobacterium bacteria were grouped into type HC1, while those with high levels of Streptococcus and Bifidobacterium bacteria were labelled type HC3.
Individuals in type HC1 were nearly nine times as likely to have severe levels of the parasite – defined as a parasite concentration higher than the average across participants – compared with people in type HC3. On average, levels of P. falciparum were nearly six times higher in those with an HC1 microbiome than in people with an HC3 microbiome.
As higher parasite levels are linked to worse symptoms, the findings suggest that altering people’s microbiomes before they catch malaria could reduce the severity of the disease.
Manipulating the gut microbiome may become a useful way to reduce the severity of many diseases, including malaria, say and at the University of Lisbon in Portugal. However, the results show a correlation, not a causal relationship, they add, and we don’t know how gut microbes might influence the severity of the illness.
One possible mechanism for this may be through the immune system reacting to sugar molecules that are found on both gut bacteria and P. falciparum, says at the Gulbenkian Institute of Science in Oeiras, Portugal.
Reference: bioRxiv,
