Journal
MOLECULAR OMICS
Volume 18, Issue 6, Pages 490-505Publisher
ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/d2mo00044j
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India
- DBT-Ramalingaswami Reentry fellowship [BT/RLF/Reentry/25/2015]
- SERB core research grant [CRG/2018/002052]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
This study found dysbiosis and an increase in opportunistic pathogens in the nasopharyngeal microbiome of COVID-19 patients. The enrichment of Mycobacteria and Mycoplasma in symptomatic patients was strongly correlated with chest pain and fever.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a major global health concern. This virus infects the upper respiratory tract and causes pneumonia-like symptoms. So far, few studies have shown alterations in nasopharyngeal (NP) microbial diversity, enrichment of opportunistic pathogens and their role in co-infections during respiratory infections. Therefore, we hypothesized that microbial diversity changes, with increase in the population of opportunistic pathogens, during SARS-CoV2 infection in the nasopharynx, which may be involved in co-infection in COVID-19 patients. The 16S rRNA variable regions, V1-V9, of NP samples of control and COVID-19 (symptomatic and asymptomatic) patients were sequenced using the Oxford Nanopore (TM) technology. Comprehensive bioinformatics analysis for determining alpha/beta diversities, non-metric multidimensional scaling, correlation studies, canonical correspondence analysis, linear discriminate analysis, and dysbiosis index were used to analyze the control and COVID-19-specific NP microbiomes. We observed significant dysbiosis in the COVID-19 NP microbiome with an increase in the abundance of opportunistic pathogens at genus and species levels in asymptomatic/symptomatic patients. The significant abundance of Mycobacteria spp. and Mycoplasma spp. in symptomatic patients suggests their association and role in co-infections in COVID-19 patients. Furthermore, we found strong correlation of enrichment of Mycobacteria and Mycoplasma with the occurrences of chest pain and fever in symptomatic COVID-19 patients. This is the first study from India to show the abundance of Mycobacteria and Mycoplasma opportunistic pathogens in non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients and their relationship with symptoms, indicating the possibility of co-infections.
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