2022 Articles

Meta-analysis of 16S rRNA microbial data identified alterations of the gut microbiota in COVID-19 patients during the acute and recovery phases

Cheng, Xiaomin; Zhang, Yali; Li, Yifan; Wu, Qin; Wu, Jiani; Park, Soo-Kyung; Guo, Cheng; Lu, Jiahai

Background
Dozens of studies have demonstrated gut dysbiosis in COVID-19 patients during the acute and recovery phases. However, a consensus on the specific COVID-19 associated bacteria is missing. In this study, we performed a meta-analysis to explore whether robust and reproducible alterations in the gut microbiota of COVID-19 patients exist across different populations.
Methods
A systematic review was conducted for studies published prior to May 2022 in electronic databases. After review, we included 16 studies that comparing the gut microbiota in COVID-19 patients to those of controls. The 16S rRNA sequence data of these studies were then re-analyzed using a standardized workflow and synthesized by meta-analysis.
Results
We found that gut bacterial diversity of COVID-19 patients in both the acute and recovery phases was consistently lower than non-COVID-19 individuals. Microbial differential abundance analysis showed depletion of anti-inflammatory butyrate-producing bacteria and enrichment of taxa with pro-inflammatory properties in COVID-19 patients during the acute phase compared to non-COVID-19 individuals. Analysis of microbial communities showed that the gut microbiota of COVID-19 recovered patients were still in unhealthy ecostates.
Conclusions
Our results provided a comprehensive synthesis to better understand gut microbial perturbations associated with COVID-19 and identified underlying biomarkers for microbiome-based diagnostics and therapeutics.