Age- and disease severity-associated changes in the nasopharyngeal microbiota of COVID-19 patients

Abstract

Although many studies have associated changes in the nasopharyngeal microbiota to patient's susceptibility to COVID-19, their results are highly variable and contradictory. Addressing the limitations in previous research responsible for that variability, this study uses 16S rRNA gene sequencing to analyze the nasopharyngeal microbiota of 395 subjects, 117 controls, and 278 COVID-19 patients, of different age groups that cover the entire lifespan and across varying disease severities. This revealed that bacterial alpha diversity decreases progressively throughout life but only in severely ill COVID-19 patients, in whose nasopharynx, moreover, several opportunistic pathogen bacterial genera are overrepresented. Notably, Scardovia wiggsiae appears only in severe COVID-19 patients over 60 years of age, suggesting its potential utility as a COVID-19 severity biomarker in the elderly, who are the most susceptible individuals to suffer from serious forms of the disease. Thus, our results provide valuable insights into age-associated dynamics within nasopharyngeal microbiota during severe COVID-19.