Nasopharyngeal microbial profiles associated with the risk of airway allergies in early childhood

Background: Airway microbiota may play an important role in regulating the im-mune response related to allergic respiratory diseases. A molecular-based approach was used to analyze the association between nasopharyngeal microbiota, serum immunoglobin (Ig)E levels, and childhood respiratory allergies.Methods: Nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from children aged 36 months with three phe-notypes, including allergic respiratory diseases plus atopy, atopy alone, and healthy controls for microbiome analysis using Illumina-based 16S rRNA gene sequencing.Results: In total, 87 children were enrolled, including 36 with allergic respiratory diseases plus atopy, 21 with atopy alone, and 30 healthy controls. Proteobacteria (45.7% ), Firmicutes (29.3%), and Actinobacteria (15.3%) were the most prevalent phyla in the study population. Compared with healthy controls, a lower Chao1 index was found in children with allergies (P < 0.035), indicating that bacterial richness was inversely associated with airway allergies. Additionally, in comparison with healthy controls, the genera Acinetobacter, Moraxella, Asaia, and Rhodococcus were more abundant and positively correlated with total serum IgE levels in children with allergies (P < 0.01), whereas the genera Enterococcus and Rickettsia were inversely correlated with total IgE levels, and also appeared to be negatively associated with airway allergies (P < 0.01).Conclusions: The composition of the nasopharyngeal microbiota alteration may have an influ-ence on childhood respiratory allergies. The inverse association between bacterial richness and allergies postulated that children living in a microbially hygienic environment may in-crease their risk of developing respiratory allergies.Copyright (c) 2022, Taiwan Society of Microbiology. Published by Elsevier Taiwan LLC. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

This study analyzed the association between nasopharyngeal microbiota, serum immunoglobin E levels, and childhood respiratory allergies. The results suggest that alterations in the nasopharyngeal microbiota composition may influence the development of respiratory allergies in children.