Abstract
During amoebiasis, colonization of the gut by Entamoeba histolytica can lead to alterations of the host microbiota. In this study, we have compared the gut microbiota of patients of amoebiasis with healthy controls using 16S rRNA gene variable regions, (V1-V3) and (V3-V5), of the bacterial genome. From this 16S rRNA gene amplicon data, one paired-end and two single-end datasets were selected and compared by the number of OTUs obtained, sequence count, and diversity analysis. Our results showed that the V1-V3-paired-end dataset gave the maximum number of OTUs in comparison to the two single-end datasets studied. The amoebiasis samples showed a significant drop in richness in the alpha diversity measurements and lower intra group similarity compared to the healthy controls. Bacteria of genus Prevotella, Sutterella, and Collinsella were more abundant in healthy controls whereas Escherichia, Klebsiella, and Ruminococcus were more abundant in the E. histolytica-positive patients. All the healthy controls harbored bacteria belonging to Faecalibacterium, Prevotella, Ruminococcus, Subdoligranulum, and Escherichia genera while all the E. histolytica-positive patient samples contained genus Enterobacter. The compositional changes in the gut microbiome observed in our study indicated a higher prevalence of pathogenic bacteria along with a depletion of beneficial bacteria in E. histolytica-infected individuals when compared with healthy controls. These results underline the interplay between E. histolytica and the human gut microbiome, giving important inputs for future studies and treatments.
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Data availability
The data generated and analyzed in this study have been submitted in the NCBI Bio Project database under project number PRJNA608066 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/?term=PRJNA608066).
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the High Performance Computing facility at CMSD, University of Hyderabad.
Funding
This research was supported by a grant from the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, and European Union under Indo-European collaboration on biotechnology with Indian investigators (order no.: BT/IN/Infect-Era/AB/2015). The authors thank the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, for research associate fellowships to Lakshmi Rani Iyer, Anil Kumar Verma, and Vivek Thakur and Ramalingaswami fellowship to Vivek Thakur, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, for JC Bose Fellowship to Alok Bhattacharya, and FIST grant to the School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
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Conceptualization: Alok Bhattacharya and Jaishree Paul; methodology: Anil Kumar Verma, Lakshmi Rani Iyer, and Vivek Thakur; formal analysis and investigation: Lakshmi Rani Iyer, Nisha Chandel, and Anil Kumar Verma; writing—original draft preparation: Lakshmi Rani Iyer, Nisha Chandel, and Vivek Thakur; writing—review and editing: Jaishree Paul and Alok Bhattacharya; funding acquisition: Alok Bhattacharya and Jaishree Paul; resources: Alok Bhattacharya, Jaishree Paul, and Ashish Kumar Mandal; supervision: Alok Bhattacharya, Jaishree Paul, and Vivek Thakur.
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Ethical clearance for the study was obtained from both the participating institutes, namely, JNU (IERB No. 2015/Faculty/82) and Safdarjung Hospital (No. IEC/SJH/VMMC/Project/September/2014/535).
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Iyer, L.R., Chandel, N., Verma, A.K. et al. Effect of Entamoeba histolytica infection on gut microbial diversity and composition in diarrheal patients from New Delhi. Parasitol Res 122, 285–298 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-022-07728-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-022-07728-9