Department of Food Science, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
School of Medical Laboratory Sciences, Jimma University, Jimma, Ethiopia.
Nat Commun. 2024 Sep 2;15(1):7532. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-51464-w.
Diarrhea claims >500,000 lives annually among children under five years of age in low- and middle-income countries. Mortality due to acute diarrhea (<7 days' duration) is decreasing, but prolonged (7-13 days) and persistent (≥14 days of duration) diarrhea remains a massive challenge. Here, we use a case-control study to decipher if fecal gut microbiota compositional differences between Ethiopian children with acute (n=554) or prolonged/persistent (n=95) diarrhea and frequency-matched non-diarrheal controls (n=663) are linked to diarrheal etiology. We show that diarrhea cases are associated with lower bacterial diversity and enriched in Escherichia spp., Campylobacter spp., and Streptococcus spp. Further, diarrhea cases are depleted in gut commensals such as Prevotella copri, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, and Dialister succinatiphilus, with depletion being most pronounced in prolonged/persistent cases, suggesting that prolonged duration of diarrhea is accompanied by depletion of gut commensals and that re-establishing these via e.g., microbiota-directed food supplements offer a potential treatment strategy.
在中低收入国家，5 岁以下儿童每年有超过 50 万人死于腹泻。急性腹泻（持续时间<7 天）的死亡率正在下降，但迁延性（7-13 天）和持续性（持续时间≥14 天）腹泻仍然是一个巨大的挑战。在这里，我们使用病例对照研究来解码埃塞俄比亚急性（n=554）或迁延性/持续性（n=95）腹泻儿童与频率匹配的非腹泻对照（n=663）之间粪便肠道微生物群组成差异是否与腹泻病因有关。我们表明，腹泻病例与较低的细菌多样性有关，并且富含 Escherichia spp.、Campylobacter spp. 和 Streptococcus spp.。此外，腹泻病例中肠道共生菌如 Prevotella copri、Faecalibacterium prausnitzii 和 Dialister succinatiphilus 的丰度降低，在迁延性/持续性病例中降低最为明显，这表明腹泻持续时间延长伴随着肠道共生菌的消耗，通过例如，基于微生物组的食物补充来重新建立这些共生菌可能是一种潜在的治疗策略。
