Congrats to Firas Midani on his publication!

Human Gut Microbiota Predicts Susceptibility to Vibrio cholerae Infection

Cholera is a public health problem worldwide and the risk factors for infection are only partially understood. We found that machine learning models based on gut microbiota predicted V. cholerae infection as well as models based on known clinical and epidemiological risk factors. A ‘predictive gut microbiota’ of roughly 100 bacterial taxa discriminated between contacts who developed infection and those who did not. Susceptibility to cholera was associated with depleted levels of microbes from the phylum Bacteroidetes. By contrast, a microbe associated with cholera by our modeling framework, Paracoccus aminovorans, promoted the in vitro growth of V. cholerae. Gut microbiota structure, clinical outcome, and age were also linked. These findings support the hypothesis that abnormal gut microbial communities are a host factor related to V. cholerae susceptibility.

https://academic.oup.com/jid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiy192/4969495

 

Firas S Midani, Ana A Weil, Fahima Chowdhury, Yasmin A Begum, Ashraful I Khan, Meti D Debela, Heather K Durand, Aspen T Reese, Sai N Nimmagadda, Justin D Silverman, Crystal N Ellis, Edward T Ryan, Stephen B Calderwood, Jason B Harris, Firdausi Qadri, Lawrence A David, Regina C LaRocque; Human Gut Microbiota Predicts Susceptibility to Vibrio cholerae Infection, The Journal of Infectious Diseases, , jiy192, https://doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jiy192