SymbNET Seminar – 10 November

14h00 WET // 15h00 CET

Hybrid seminar @FCG-IGC and online

Speaker: Pascale Vonaesch

Affiliation: Microbiota-targeted interventions Lab, DMF-UNIL, Switzerland

Title: The gut ecosystem in childhood undernutrition

Abstract: Environmental enteric dysfunction (EED) is an inflammatory disease postulated to contribute to stunted child growth and to be associated with intestinal dysbiosis and nutrient malabsorption. Yet, the microbial contribution to EED remains little studied. In the work I will present, we assess for changes in the proximal and distal intestinal microbiota in the context of stunting and EED. To this purpose, we recruited children aged 2-5 years in Bangui, Central African Republic and Antananarivo, Madagascar from December 2016—May 2018 (Afribiota project). We analyzed gastric, duodenal and fecal samples from 627 children using a metabarcoding approach targeting the V4 hypervariable region of the 16S and 18S rRNA gene (bacteria, microeukaryotes) and the full ITS2 region (fungi) and tested for associations with clinical factors such as anaemia, intestinal inflammation, chronic undernutrition and age. We also assessed for asymptomatic pathogen carriage as well as changes induced to the immune system. Last, we investigated the role of bacterial isolates from these children in the pathophysiology underlying stunted child growth. I will end the presentation with some recent follow-up work aimed at developing microbiota-targeting interventions to correct for the observed dysbiosis and re-equilibrate the microbiota for better health.

 

SymbNET Seminars