Gut microbiota composition reflects disease severity and dysfunctional immune responses in patients with COVID-19

By Yun Kit Yeoh, T. Zuo, G. Lui, Fen Zhang, Qin Liu, A. Li, A. Chung, C. Cheung, E. Tso, K. Fung and 14 more. Gut, 2021

1,083 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Objective Although COVID-19 is primarily a respiratory illness, there is mounting evidence suggesting that the GI tract is involved in this disease. We investigated whether the gut microbiome is linked to disease severity in patients with COVID-19, and whether perturbations in microbiome composition, if any, resolve with clearance of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Methods In this two-hospital cohort study, we obtained blood, stool and patient records from 100 patients with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. Serial stool samples were collected from 27 of the 100 patients up to 30 days after clearance of SARS-CoV-2. Gut microbiome compositions were characterised by shotgun sequencing total DNA extracted from stools. Concentrations of inflammatory cytokines and blood markers were measured from plasma. Results Gut microbiome composition was significantly altered in patients with COVID-19 compared with non-COVID-19 individuals irrespective of whether patients had received medication (p<0.01). Several gut commensals with known immunomodulatory potential such as Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, Eubacterium rectale and bifidobacteria were underrepresented in patients and remained low in samples collected up to 30 days after disease resolution. Moreover, this perturbed composition exhibited stratification with disease severity concordant with elevated concentrations of inflammatory cytokines and blood markers such as C reactive protein, lactate dehydrogenase, aspartate aminotransferase and gamma-glutamyl transferase. Conclusion Associations between gut microbiota composition, levels of cytokines and inflammatory markers in patients with COVID-19 suggest that the gut microbiome is involved in the magnitude of COVID-19 severity possibly via modulating host immune responses. Furthermore, the gut microbiota dysbiosis after disease resolution could contribute to persistent symptoms, highlighting a need to understand how gut microorganisms are involved in inflammation and COVID-19.

Subfields: Infectious Diseases, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/49df8a5babe5b7a0ce3e0fb428d7e7de5b819822

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Zhuoxun Wu
Y. K. Lam
Kaijian Hou
Jilin Li
Xuan-Yu Chen
D. Zhu
Dongya Zhang
Jing-Quan Wang

Citations in the corpus

Microbiota in health and diseases (2022, positive): “Recent data also suggested that gut microbiota composition may reflect disease severity in COVID-19 patients.(232) In COVID-19 patients, decreased abundance of several gut commensals was observed, including Bifidobacteria, Eubacterium rectale, and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii.”
Long COVID or post-COVID-19 syndrome: putative pathophysiology, risk factors, and treatments (2021, background): “Gut microbiome disruption (i.e. gut dysbiosis) has been observed among patients with COVID-19, which persisted for at least ten days up to 30 days after disease resolution [143,144,145].”
Short-chain fatty acids: linking diet, the microbiome and immunity (2024, positive): “…commonly have an altered gut microbiota, with reduced bacterial diversity and an underrepresentation of butyrate-producing and butyrate-supporting bacteria, including Bifidobacterium , Lactobacillus , Roseburia and F. praunitzii , and that both changes correlate with disease severity 37,38 .”