Helicobacter heilmannii sensu lato: An overview of the infection in humans

Table 1 Natural hosts and characteristics of Helicobacter heilmannii s.l. species that infect humans

Species	Natural host	Length/width (μm)	Number and distribution of flagella	Periplasmatic fibrils	In vitro isolation from humans	Ref.
H. heilmannii s.l.
H. bizzozeronii	Cat, dog, fox ,lynx	5-10/0.3	10-20, bipolar	No	Yes	[17,42,81,106]
H. felis	Cat, dog, rabbit, cheetah	5-7.5/0.4	10-17, bipolar	Yes	Yes	[17,45,68,80]
H. heilmannii s.s.	Cat, dog, fox, lynx, non-human primates	3.0-6.5/0.6-0.7	4-10, bipolar	No	No	[15,17,82,106]
H. salomonis	Cat, dog, rabbit	5-7/0.8-1.2	10-23, bipolar	No	No	[17,43,106]
H. suis	Pig, non-human primates	2.3-6.7/0.9-1.2	4-10, bipolar	No	No	[17,44,83]
H. pylori		2.5-5.0/0.5-1.0	4-8, unipolar	No	Yes	[6]

Table 2 General features of the available Helicobacter heilmannii s.l. species genomes and homology to Helicobacter pylori virulence genes

	H. suis		H. felis	H. bizzozeronii	H. heilmannii s.s.
Strain	HS1	HS5	CS1 (ATCC 49179)	CIII-1	ASB1
Host, Country	Pig, Belgium	Pig, Belgium	Adult cat, Australia	47-yr-old female patient with severe gastric symptoms, Finland	Kitten with severe gastritis, Belgium
Genome size (MB)	1635	1670	1673	1755	1805
G + C content	39.9%	39.9%	44.5%	46%	47.4%
CDSs	1266	1257	1671	1894	1918
Function assigned	1072	1066	1387	1280	1183
Plasmids	Not found	Not found	One (6.7 Kb; 5 CDSs)	One (52.1 Kb; 77 CDSs)	Not found
VacA	Yes (63% homology)	Yes (22% homology)	No	No	No
CagA	No1	No1	No	No	No
Ref.	Vermoote et al[83]		Arnold et al[80]	Schott et al[81]	Smet et al[82]

¹Two members of the cag pathogenicity island (cag23/E and cagX) were identified in the H. suis genomes. CDSs: Coding sequences.