In a small study in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 6-week-old infants with healthy gut microbiomes were less likely to contract malaria in their first year of life.
While the study is preliminary, it suggests the intriguing possibility that treatments such as probiotics could be protective against malaria, which kills more than 600,000 people a year, primarily children in sub-Saharan Africa. Potential clinical applications would require more research, however.
The work was led by researchers at the University of Florida in collaboration with the HEAL Africa Hospital in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a country which accounts for more than 10% of all malaria deaths. Scientists tracked 47 mother-infant pairs and collected stool samples throughout the babies’ first year of life while monitoring for malaria infections.
“The microbiome at six weeks old was able to predict whether that infant was going to go on to have malaria at any time during the subsequent year of life,” said Julie Moore, Ph.D., a professor of infectious diseases in the UF College of Veterinary Medicine and senior author of the new report. “It’s way too early to propose that giving infants probiotics is something that should be done in malarious areas, but it’s certainly something that we can think about.”