Integrated analysis reveals important differences in the gut and oropharyngeal microbiota between children with mild and severe hand, foot, and mouth disease
Open Access
- 31 March 2023
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis Ltd in Emerging Microbes & Infections
- Vol. 12 (1), 2192819
- https://doi.org/10.1080/22221751.2023.2192819
Abstract
Little is known about alternation and difference in gut microbiota between patients with mild and severe hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD). We investigated the differences in gut and oropharynx microbiotas between mild and severe HFMD in young children and changes in bacterial profiles as the disease progresses from acute to convalescent phase. Forty-two patients with confirmed HFMD were studied, among which thirty-two had severe HFMD and ten had mild HFMD. First rectal swabs were collected from all patients at an average of 2 days (acute phase) after the onset of symptoms, and second rectal swabs were collected from 8 severe patients at day 9 (convalescent phase) after the onset. Oropharyngeal swabs were obtained from 10 patients in the acute phase and 6 in the convalescent phase. 16S rRNA sequencing was performed for all 70 samples. Compared with mild HFMD, severe HFMD exhibited significantly decreased diversity and richness of gut microbiota. Gut microbiota bacterial profiles observed in the acute and convalescent phases resembled each other, but differed from those in mild cases. Additionally, 50% of patients with severe HFMD in the acute phase harbored a dominant pathobiontic bacterial genus. However, none of patients with mild HFMD had such bacteria. Similar bacterial compositions in oropharynx microbiota were detected between mild and severe cases. Our findings indicate that severe HFMD exhibits significantly impaired diversity of gut microbiota and frequent gut and oropharyngeal inflammation-inducing bacteria. However, the results should be interpreted with caution as the number of the subjects was limited.Keywords
Funding Information
- National Key Technologies R&D Program (2017ZX10202101-004)
- National Microbial Resource Center (NMRC-2022-2)
- National Pathogen Resource Center (NPRC-32)
This publication has 47 references indexed in Scilit:
- Hand, foot, and mouth disease in China, 2008–12: an epidemiological studyThe Lancet Infectious Diseases, 2014
- Predictive functional profiling of microbial communities using 16S rRNA marker gene sequencesNature Biotechnology, 2013
- Insights from quantitative metaproteomics and protein-stable isotope probing into microbial ecologyThe ISME Journal, 2013
- phyloseq: An R Package for Reproducible Interactive Analysis and Graphics of Microbiome Census DataPLOS ONE, 2013
- FLASH: fast length adjustment of short reads to improve genome assembliesBioinformatics, 2011
- Polyamine catabolism contributes to enterotoxigenic Bacteroides fragilis -induced colon tumorigenesisProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2011
- Metagenomic biomarker discovery and explanationGenome Biology, 2011
- Induction of Persistent Colitis by a Human Commensal, Enterotoxigenic Bacteroides fragilis , in Wild-Type C57BL/6 MiceInfection and Immunity, 2009
- IL-6 and Stat3 Are Required for Survival of Intestinal Epithelial Cells and Development of Colitis-Associated CancerCancer Cell, 2009
- Deaths of Children during an Outbreak of Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease in Sarawak, Malaysia: Clinical and Pathological Characteristics of the DiseaseClinical Infectious Diseases, 2000