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An African origin for the intimate association between humans and Helicobacter pylori

Nature volume 445, pages 915–918 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

Infection of the stomach by Helicobacter pylori is ubiquitous among humans. However, although H. pylori strains from different geographic areas are associated with clear phylogeographic differentiation1,2,3,4, the age of an association between these bacteria with humans remains highly controversial5,6. Here we show, using sequences from a large data set of bacterial strains that, as in humans, genetic diversity in H. pylori decreases with geographic distance from east Africa, the cradle of modern humans. We also observe similar clines of genetic isolation by distance (IBD) for both H. pylori and its human host at a worldwide scale. Like humans, simulations indicate that H. pylori seems to have spread from east Africa around 58,000 yr ago. Even at more restricted geographic scales, where IBD tends to become blurred, principal component clines in H. pylori from Europe strongly resemble the classical clines for Europeans described by Cavalli-Sforza and colleagues7. Taken together, our results establish that anatomically modern humans were already infected by H. pylori before their migrations from Africa and demonstrate that H. pylori has remained intimately associated with their human host populations ever since.

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Figure 1: Five ancestral populations in H. pylori.
Figure 2: Parallel geographic patterns of genetic diversity in humans and H. pylori.
Figure 3: Similar clinal gradients between principal components 1–3 from European H. pylori and humans.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the receipt of bacterial strains from A. van der Ende, M. J. Blaser, N. J. Saunders, R. J. Owen, F. Mégraud and sequences from K. T. Momynaliev and C. Kraft. We thank J. Goudet for providing a modified version of FSTAT able to deal with the large data set and help with R by K. -P. Pleissner. Grant support was from the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) in the framework of the PathoGenoMik Network (M.A., S.S.), the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (F.B.), the Swedish Research council (T.W.) and Lund University Hospital (T.W.)

EMBL accession numbers for DNA sequences, AM413111–418360

Author information

Author notes

  1. Bodo Linz and François Balloux: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Molecular Biology, Max-Planck Institut für Infektionsbiologie, D-10117 Berlin, Germany,

    Bodo Linz, Yoshan Moodley, Philippe Roumagnac, Christiana Stamer & Mark Achtman

  2. Department of Genetics, Theoretical and Molecular Population Genetics Group, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EH, UK,

    François Balloux & Hua Liu

  3. Department of Zoology, Evolutionary Ecology Group, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EJ, UK,

    Andrea Manica

  4. Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3SY, UK,

    Daniel Falush

  5. Génétique et Evolution des Maladies Infectieuses, UMR IRD-CNRS 2724, centre IRD de Montpellier, 911 Avenue Agropolis, BP 64501, 34394 Montpellier Cedex 05, France,

    Franck Prugnolle

  6. Department of Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology, University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0002, South Africa,

    Schalk W. van der Merwe

  7. Department of Medicine–Gastroenterology, Baylor College of Medicine and Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center, Houston, TX 77030, USA,

    Yoshio Yamaoka & David Y. Graham

  8. Department of Microbiology, Donostia Hospital, 20014 San Sebastian, Spain,

    Emilio Perez-Trallero

  9. Department of Laboratory Medicine, Lund University, SE22632 Lund, Sweden,

    Torkel Wadstrom

  10. Medizinische Hochschule Hannover, Institut für Medizinische Mikrobiologie und Krankenhaushygiene, Carl-Neuberg-Strasse 1, 30625 Hannover, Germany,

    Sebastian Suerbaum

Authors
  1. Bodo Linz
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  2. François Balloux
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to François Balloux, Sebastian Suerbaum or Mark Achtman.

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Competing interests

EMBL accession numbers for DNA sequences, AM413111–418360. Reprints and permissions information is available at www.nature.com/reprints. The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

This file contains Supplementary Figures S1-S6, Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Tables S1-S6 and additional references. (PDF 2386 kb)

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Linz, B., Balloux, F., Moodley, Y. et al. An African origin for the intimate association between humans and Helicobacter pylori. Nature 445, 915–918 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05562

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