Scientific Reports · 5 authors, 3 centres
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This cross-sectional study compared gut microbiome composition in 12-month-old infants in New York City sampled before (N=34) versus during (N=20) the first 9 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Infants sampled during the pandemic exhibited lower alpha diversity, significantly different beta diversity, and lower abundance of Pasteurellaceae and Haemophilus compared to those sampled before the pandemic.
This cross-sectional study compared gut microbiome composition among 12-month-old infants in New York City who provided stool samples either before the pandemic (N=34) or during the first 9 months of the pandemic (N=20). Infants sampled during the pandemic had lower Chao1 alpha diversity, significantly different beta diversity based on unweighted Unifrac distance, lower abundance of Pasteurellaceae family taxa, and lower abundance of Haemophilus genus taxa. Exploratory analyses within the pandemic group suggested that these changes occurred relatively quickly after the start of the pandemic and were sustained rather than accumulating gradually. The authors noted that pandemic groups did not differ on maternal perceived stress or mental health, suggesting the microbiome differences may have been driven by factors distinct from maternal psychosocial stress. Limitations include the small total sample size (n=54), which limited power to detect individual taxa-level differences particularly within rare taxa, and the restriction to a single urban context (New York City), limiting generalizability. The study was not able to directly measure how every aspect of families' environments changed due to the pandemic.
