Abstract
Cystic echinococcosis (CE) is a chronic infectious disease caused by Echinococcus granulosus. To confirm whether the infection impacts on the gut microbiota, we established a mouse model of E. granulosus infection in this study whereby BALB/c mice were infected with micro-cysts of E. granulosus. After 4 months of infection, fecal samples were collected for high-throughput sequencing of the hypervariable regions of the 16S rRNA gene. Sequence analysis revealed a total of 13,353 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) with only 40.6% of the OTUs having genera reference information and 101 of the OTUs were significantly increased in infected mice. Bioinformatics analysis showed that the common core microbiota were not significantly changed at family level. However, two genera (Eisenbergiella and Parabacteroides) were enriched in the infected mice (PAMOV A < 0.05) at genus level. Functional analysis indicated that seven pathways were altered in the E. granulosus Infection Group compared with the Uninfected Group. Spearman correlation analysis showed strong correlations of IgG, IgG1 and IgG2a with nine major genera. E. granulosus cyst infection may change the gut microbiota which may be associated with metabolic pathways.
Highlights
Cystic echinococcosis (CE) is a cosmopolitan zoonosis caused by the cystic stage of the dog tapeworm Echinococcus granulosus (McManus et al, 2012)
We show that E. granulosus impacted on the gut microbiota of the mice with microbiota changes likely being associated with the altered host immune status in infected individuals
We showed that E. granulosus infection increased two genera of gut microbiota: Eisenbergiella and genus
Summary
Cystic echinococcosis (CE) is a cosmopolitan zoonosis caused by the cystic stage of the dog tapeworm Echinococcus granulosus (McManus et al, 2012). The gut microbiota play an important role in human health (Chen et al, 2017) impacting on metabolism, immunity, development and the behavior of the host (Thaiss et al, 2016). Studies showed that helminth infection in the gut induced typical Th2 immune responses which may control the mcriobiota in the gut of mice (Ramanan et al, 2016; Guernier et al, 2017; Wegener Parfrey et al, 2017). It is not known whether E. granulosus infection impacts on the gut microbiota of humans or mice. We show that E. granulosus impacted on the gut microbiota of the mice with microbiota changes likely being associated with the altered host immune status in infected individuals
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