CAS Key Lab for Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
Sci China Life Sci. 2024 Aug;67(8):1739-1750. doi: 10.1007/s11427-023-2488-0. Epub 2024 May 9.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many fatalities worldwide and continues to affect the health of the recovered patients in the form of long-COVID. In this study, we compared the gut microbiome of uninfected infants and children before the pandemic began (BEFORE cohort, n=906) to that of after the pandemic (AFTER cohort, n=220) to examine the potential impact of social distancing and life habit changes on infant/children gut microbiome. Based on 16S rRNA sequencing, we found a significant change in microbiome composition after the pandemic, with Bacteroides enterotype increasing to 35.45% from 30.46% before the pandemic. qPCR quantification indicated that the bacterial loads of seven keystone taxa decreased by 91.69%-19.58%. Quantitative microbiome profiling, used to enhance the resolution in detecting microbiome differences, revealed a greater explained variance of pandemic on microbiome compared to gender, as well as a significant decrease in bacterial loads in 15 of the 20 major genera. The random forest age-predictor indicated the gut microbiomes were less mature in the after-pandemic cohort than in the before-pandemic cohort in the children group (3-12 years old) and had features of a significantly younger age (average of 1.86 years). Lastly, body weight and height were significantly lower in the after-pandemic cohort than in the before-pandemic cohort in infants (<1 year of age), which was associated with a decrease in bacterial loads in the fecal microbiome.
新冠疫情在全球范围内造成了许多人死亡，并以长新冠的形式继续影响康复患者的健康。在这项研究中，我们比较了疫情前（BEFORE 队列，n=906）和疫情后（AFTER 队列，n=220）未感染婴儿和儿童的肠道微生物组，以研究社交距离和生活习惯改变对婴儿/儿童肠道微生物组的潜在影响。基于 16S rRNA 测序，我们发现疫情后肠道微生物组组成发生了显著变化，Bacteroides 肠型从疫情前的 30.46%增加到 35.45%。qPCR 定量分析表明，七种关键类群的细菌负荷下降了 91.69%-19.58%。定量微生物组分析用于提高检测微生物组差异的分辨率，结果显示，与性别相比，疫情对微生物组的解释方差更大，20 个主要属中的 15 个属的细菌负荷显著下降。随机森林年龄预测器表明，与疫情前相比，疫情后儿童组（3-12 岁）的肠道微生物组更不成熟，具有明显更年轻的特征（平均年龄为 1.86 岁）。最后，与疫情前相比，疫情后婴儿组（<1 岁）的体重和身高显著降低，这与粪便微生物组中细菌负荷的下降有关。
