Karen Pendergrass, Standards Team

Lower Bifidobacterium abundance tracked with childhood eczema across 172 children under age three, with predictive power (AUC = 0.83) confirmed by Random Forest analysis.

In 24 Mongolian adults, the gut Clostridium genus emerged as the strongest bacterial marker separating type 2 diabetes from prediabetes and controls, and higher dietary carotene intake was linked to lower Clostridium abundance.

In a cross-sectional study of IgA nephropathy patients, both gut and respiratory microbial diversity were reduced, and machine-learning models classified the disease with high accuracy, reaching an AUC of 0.99 for respiratory microbiota.

In 47 irritable bowel syndrome patients, fecal microbiota differed from healthy controls, with lower Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus and higher Gram-negative bacteria. Pseudomonas aeruginosa was detected in nearly all patients (97.9 percent) versus one third of controls.

Among 107 hemodialysis patients, most had inadequate vitamin K status, a state the study links to gut dysbiosis and heightened inflammation.

Shotgun metagenomics found Burkholderiaceae enrichment and a higher Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratio distinguish cystic fibrosis lung microbiota from non-CF bronchiectasis.

In 1,164 patients hospitalized for COVID-19, empiric azithromycin reshaped the upper airway microbiome and raised macrolide resistance gene expression, which climbed from 24.5 to 42.9 percent of the resistome, with no anti-inflammatory or antiviral benefit. Changes appeared within a day and persisted over a week.

In a Tunisian cohort, the ocular surface microbiome was significantly altered in glaucoma and dry eye disease, with opportunistic bacteria rising across all patient groups and the combined glaucoma-plus-dry-eye group showing the most pronounced dysbiosis.

Age and sex collectively shape the healthy conjunctival microbiome, with young and old adults differing significantly in bacterial composition, metabolic functions, and antibiotic resistance gene abundance, while men and women differed only in beta diversity.

In 191 infants, direct neonatal antibiotics were linked to lower antibody titres against pneumococcal, Hib and diphtheria vaccines and to reduced gut Bifidobacterium at the time of vaccination. In mice, Bifidobacterium species or a neonatal probiotic restored pneumococcal vaccine responses.

Gut microbiome composition was significantly altered in COVID-19 patients, with immunomodulatory commensals like Faecalibacterium prausnitzii depleted and still low 30 days after viral clearance.

In the first metagenomic study of tuberculosis and COVID-19 co-infection, sputum from co-infected patients showed enrichment of inflammation-linked and opportunistic species over TB alone, plus upregulated pulmonary surfactant lipid metabolism (fold change 7.46). This suggests COVID-19 may worsen airway dysbiosis in TB.

Wild khulans harbor richer, more diverse gut microbiomes than captive khulans, with little evidence that waterhole microbiota shape the gut community.

Sequencing subgingival plaque from 88 patients found 51 of 170 genera and 200 of 746 species significantly altered in deep periodontitis pockets versus shallow healthy sites.

Gut bacterial dysbiosis was more pronounced in people with diabetic retinopathy than in type 2 diabetes without retinopathy or healthy controls.

Enterotype grouping by Prevotella-to-Bacteroides ratio stayed stable over a 6-month diet trial, and subjects with a high ratio had higher plasma cholesterol afterward.

Fecal 16S rRNA sequencing found distinct gut microbiota alterations in Chinese Parkinson's disease patients, with several genera linked to disease duration, medication dose, and cognitive symptoms.

Older adults with sarcopenic obesity showed reduced gut microbial alpha diversity and distinct taxonomic signatures compared to those with sarcopenia alone or normal controls.

COVID-19 patients showed reduced oral and gut microbial diversity, with fewer butyric-acid-producing and more lipopolysaccharide-producing bacteria. Classifiers built on 8 oral and 7 fecal microbial markers diagnosed COVID-19 with area-under-curve values above 0.87, and diagnosed antibody-positive suspected cases.

Gut Klebsiella and Megasphaera tracked with obesity in African American children while oral Aggregatibacter and Eikenella tracked with obesity in European American children, showing ethnicity-specific microbial obesity signatures.

Fecal metagenomic markers detected colorectal cancer at accuracy matching FOBT, and combining both tests raised sensitivity over 45 percent while preserving specificity.

A meta-analysis of 1,255 oral samples found biopsy and swab microbiomes differ most across cancer stages. A random-forest model on five swab genera separated oral cancer from health with an AUC of 0.918, holding at 0.849 on a second sequencing platform.

Chronic alcohol worsened periodontal bone damage in rats and shifted their oral microbial community, linking alcohol exposure to dysbiosis-driven periodontitis.

In postmenopausal women, a low-fat vegan diet with daily soybeans cut total hot flashes by 95 percent, and shifts in specific gut bacteria such as Porphyromonas and Prevotella corporis tracked with reductions in severe hot flashes.