van Sluijs Lisa, Geisen Stefan, Lozano-Torres Jose L, Sterken Mark G, Vervoort Mariëtte T W, Wilbers Ruud H P
Laboratory of Nematology, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands.
One Health. 2025 Jun 13;21:101103. doi: 10.1016/j.onehlt.2025.101103. eCollection 2025 Dec.
Nematodes are all around us, both in the environment and associated to all imaginable organisms, ranging from plants to animals and humans. As such, nematodes are intimately linked to human, animal and plant health, both directly and indirectly, positively and negatively. Historically, studies mainly focused on the direct negative impact nematodes induce. As a result, we lack a comprehensive overview on the importance of nematodes - including non-direct and positive links. Therefore, we holistically report how human health is affected by direct interactions with nematodes, and indirect interactions via plants, animals and the environment. For that, we first focus on nematodes as human pests, but also show that some of these human-associated nematodes can positively affect human immunity. Subsequently, we summarize how nematodes impair food production and the environment as animal and plant pests, followed by an overview of the multiple indirect links that often benefit human health by enhancing animal and plant performance. Finally, we highlight the different opportunities to improve human health with nematodes, emerging from nematodes as model organisms, as a source for immunomodulatory proteins and as biological products in agriculture. We believe that our review will foster studies on links between nematodes and human health that we believe are highly promising to advance science and technology.
线虫在我们周围无处不在，存在于环境中，并与所有可以想象到的生物相关联，从植物到动物以及人类。因此，线虫与人类、动物和植物的健康直接或间接、正面或负面地紧密相连。从历史上看，研究主要集中在线虫所造成的直接负面影响上。结果，我们缺乏关于线虫重要性的全面概述，包括非直接和正面的联系。因此，我们全面报告线虫与人类的直接相互作用以及通过植物、动物和环境的间接相互作用如何影响人类健康。为此，我们首先关注作为人类害虫的线虫，但也表明其中一些与人类相关的线虫可以对人类免疫力产生积极影响。随后，我们总结线虫作为动植物害虫如何损害粮食生产和环境，接着概述通常通过提高动植物性能而对人类健康有益的多种间接联系。最后，我们强调利用线虫改善人类健康的不同机会，这些机会源于线虫作为模式生物、作为免疫调节蛋白的来源以及作为农业中的生物产品。我们相信，我们的综述将促进关于线虫与人类健康之间联系的研究，我们认为这些研究对于推动科学技术发展极具前景。
