Gut microbiome of the Hadza hunter-gatherersOriginal paper
Karen Pendergrass is a microbiome researcher specializing in microbiome-targeted interventions (MBTIs). She systematically analyzes scientific literature to identify microbial patterns, develop hypotheses, and validate interventions. As the founder of the Microbiome Signatures Database, she bridges microbiome research with clinical practice. In 2012, based on her own investigative research, she became the first documented case of FMT for Celiac Disease, four years before the first published case study.
Read MoreWhat was studied?
Researchers characterized the gut microbiome of 27 Hadza hunter-gatherers from Tanzania, comparing it with 16 urban Italian adults and, more broadly, with two rural African farming groups from Burkina Faso and Malawi. The goal was to identify gut microbial features linked to a foraging subsistence lifestyle.
How was it studied?
Fecal samples were pyrosequenced across the 16S rRNA V4 region, yielding about 310,000 reads clustered into roughly 12,000 operational taxonomic units. The team also measured short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) profiles by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and used qPCR to confirm Bifidobacterium levels.
What did they find?
Hadza gut microbiota showed significantly higher phylogenetic diversity and richness than Italian controls. Hadza samples were enriched in Prevotella, Treponema, and unclassified Bacteroidetes, with an unusual Clostridiales arrangement, and were completely lacking Bifidobacterium, a genus never before reported absent in a human population. Hadza samples were also higher in propionate while Italian samples were higher in butyrate, and Hadza gut microbiota composition differed significantly by sex, with women showing higher Treponema and men higher in two other genera linked to their fibrous, plant-heavy versus game-based foraging roles.
Why it matters
The findings suggest the Hadza gut microbiome reflects specific adaptation to a fiber-heavy foraging diet rather than representing a disease state, challenging assumptions about which microbial configurations count as healthy. The authors note this is the first characterization of a hunter-gatherer gut microbiome, a lifestyle that represents most of human evolutionary history.