Journal
FRONTIERS OF MEDICINE
Volume 16, Issue 2, Pages 263-275Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s11684-022-0921-6
Keywords
COVID-19; SARS-COV-2; gut microbiome; immune response
Categories
Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [8210010124, 81890994, 81861148030]
- Ministry of Education [WF510162602]
- State Key Laboratory of Medical Genomics, Overseas Expertise Introduction Project for Discipline Innovation (111 Project) [B17029]
- National Key R&D Program of China [2019YFA0905902]
- Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai [21ZR1480900, 21YF1427900]
- Shanghai Clinical Research Center for Hematologic Disease [19MC1910700]
- Shanghai Major Project for Clinical Medicine [2017ZZ01002]
- Shanghai Shenkang Hospital Development Center [SHDC2020CR5002]
- Innovative Research Team of High-level Local Universities in Shanghai
- Shanghai Collaborative Innovation Program on Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research [2019CXJQ01]
- Shanghai Jiao Tong University [YG2021QN19]
- Shanghai Guangci Translational Medical Research Development Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Emerging evidence suggests that the gut microbiome plays a significant role in the host immune response and severity of COVID-19. This study utilized metagenomic sequencing and immune profiling to demonstrate that the gut microbiome diversity is reduced in severe/critical COVID-19 cases compared to mild/moderate cases. Certain gut microbes were found to be altered in abundance post-SARS-CoV-2 infection and correlated with disease severity. Furthermore, there were differential enrichments of metabolic pathways in the gut microbiome between severe/critical and mild/moderate COVID-19 cases.
Emerging evidence indicates that the gut microbiome contributes to the host immune response to infectious diseases. Here, to explore the role of the gut microbiome in the host immune responses in COVID-19, we conducted shotgun metagenomic sequencing and immune profiling of 14 severe/critical and 24 mild/moderate COVID-19 cases as well as 31 healthy control samples. We found that the diversity of the gut microbiome was reduced in severe/critical COVID-19 cases compared to mild/moderate ones. We identified the abundance of some gut microbes altered post-SARS-CoV-2 infection and related to disease severity, such as Enterococcus faecium, Coprococcus comes, Roseburia intestinalis, Akkermansia muciniphila, Bacteroides cellulosilyticus and Blautia obeum. We further analyzed the correlation between the abundance of gut microbes and host responses, and obtained a correlation map between clinical features of COVID-19 and 16 severity-related gut microbe, including Coprococcus comes that was positively correlated with CD3(+)/CD4(+)/CD8(+) lymphocyte counts. In addition, an integrative analysis of gut microbiome and the transcriptome of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) showed that genes related to viral transcription and apoptosis were up-regulated in Coprococcus comes low samples. Moreover, a number of metabolic pathways in gut microbes were also found to be differentially enriched in severe/critical or mild/moderate COVID-19 cases, including the superpathways of polyamine biosynthesis II and sulfur oxidation that were suppressed in severe/critical COVID-19. Together, our study highlighted a potential regulatory role of severity related gut microbes in the immune response of host.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available