Nasal microbiota and symptom persistence in acute respiratory tract infections in infants

Neumann, Roland P.; Hilty, Markus; Xu, Binbin; Usemann, Jakob; Korten, Insa; Mika, Moana; Müller, Loretta; Latzin, Philipp; Frey, Urs

Associations with the following factors were explored: age, season at first ARI, sex, cohabitating siblings, caesarean section, atopy, childcare attendance, breastfeeding status and environmental tobacco smoke exposure (tables S2 and S3). Statistically significant differences between clusters at the onset of infection could be seen in infants with risk for atopy, with higher proportions in cluster A2 and A5 (76.5% and 84.6%, respectively) compared to cluster A3 (38.7%) ( p=0.008). In swab B, childcare attendance was overrepresented in the Moraxellaceae-dominated cluster B1 ( p=0.030). detected viruses were RSV (11.4%), followed by HRV/EV (10.8%), HCoV (6.0%), HPIV (3.0%) and HMPV (3.0%). In 59 (35.3%) subjects none of the targeted viruses could be detected. At the onset of infection, only HMPV occurrence was significantly different between the clusters, with the highest detection rate in cluster A3 (16.1%) ( p=0.030) (table S4). 3 weeks later, HRV/EV was overrepresented in the Moraxellaceae-dominated cluster B1 (14.6%) versus B2 (2.9%) and B3 (0.0%) ( p=0.030); HCoV was overrepresented in cluster B3 (20.0%) versus B1 (4.2%) and B2 (0.0%) ( p=0.007). HRV and HCoV were both underrepresented in the "Others"-dominated cluster B2 ( p=0.020 and p<0.001, respectively) (table S5).