Correction: Head Lice of Pygmies Reveal the Presence of Relapsing Fever Borreliae in the Republic of Congo

There is a significant gap in our knowledge of the microbe–host relationship between urban and traditional rural populations. We conducted a large-scale study to examine the gut microbiota of different traditional rural and urban lifestyles in human populations. Using high-throughput 16S ribosomal RNA gene amplicon sequencing, we tested urban French, Saudi, Senegalese, Nigerian and Polynesian individuals as well as individuals living in traditional rural societies, including Amazonians from French Guiana, Congolese Pygmies, Saudi Bedouins and Algerian Tuaregs. The gut microbiota from individuals living in traditional rural settings clustered differently and presented significantly higher diversity than those of urban populations (p 0.01). The bacterial taxa identified by class analysis as contributing most significantly to each cluster were Phascolarctobacterium for traditional rural individuals and Bifidobacterium for urban individuals. Spirochaetae were only present in the gut microbiota of individuals from traditional rural societies, and the gut microbiota of all traditional rural populations was enriched with Treponema succinifaciens. Cross-transmission of Treponema from termites or swine to humans or the increased use of antibiotics in nontraditional populations may explain why Treponema is present only in the gut microbiota of traditional rural populations.

Background Head lice, Pediculus humanus capitis, occur in four divergent mitochondrial clades (A, B, C and D), each having particular geographical distributions. Recent studies suggest that head lice, as is the case of body lice, can act as a vector for louse-borne diseases. Therefore, understanding the genetic diversity of lice worldwide is of critical importance to our understanding of the risk of louse-borne diseases. Methodology/Principal Findings Here, we report the results of the first molecular screening of pygmies’ head lice in the Republic of Congo for seven pathogens and an analysis of lice mitochondrial clades. We developed two duplex clade-specific real-time PCRs and identified three major mitochondrial clades: A, C, and D indicating high diversity among the head lice studied. We identified the presence of a dangerous human pathogen, Borrelia recurrentis, the causative agent of relapsing fever, in ten clade A head lice, which was not reported in the Republic of Congo, and B. theileri in one head louse. The results also show widespread infection among head lice with several species of Acinetobacter. A. junii was the most prevalent, followed by A. ursingii, A. baumannii, A. johnsonii, A. schindleri, A. lwoffii, A. nosocomialis and A. towneri. Conclusions/Significance Our study is the first to show the presence of B. recurrentis in African pygmies’ head lice in the Republic of Congo. This study is also the first to report the presence of DNAs of B. theileri and several species of Acinetobacter in human head lice. Further studies are needed to determine whether the head lice can transmit these pathogenic bacteria from person to another.

The Microbial Culturomics Project aiming to discover several bacterial species made it possible to isolate the strain Marseille-P4308T from a stool sample of a healthy indigenous Congolese volunteer. Strain Marseille-P4308T is a Gram-positive coccus shaped bacterium that optimally grows at 37 °C. The 16S rRNA gene sequence of the strain has a 96.2% sequence similarity to Peptostreptococcus anaerobius strain NCTC 11460T (GenBank accession number: NR_042847.1). In addition, the average nucleotide identity of strain Marseille-P4308T with its closest related species was 71.1%, which was far below the recommended threshold (>95–96%). The genome of the strain Marseille-P4308T has a length of 2.14 Mbp with G + C content of 30.4 mol%. Based on phenotypic, biochemical, genomic and phylogenetic analysis, strain Marseille-P4308T (= CSUR P4308 = CECT 9960) clearly appears to be a new species for which the name Peptostreptococcus faecalis sp. nov., is proposed.