ArticleThe ISME journal2016
Dysbiosis of upper respiratory tract microbiota in elderly pneumonia patients.
Article in The ISME journal, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 125 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
125 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 239 citations in OpenAlex.
- Meta-analysis of the human upper respiratory tract microbiome reveals robust taxonomic associations with health and disease.BMC biology · 2024Pooled it
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- Characterization of Nasopharyngeal Microbiota Dysbiosis in Children withMicroorganisms · 2026Article
- Respiratory Microbiome Remodeling in Aging: Implications for Immunosenescence and Therapeutic Intervention.Immune network · 2026Review
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- Oral and plasma microbiome in the context of acute febrile illness.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Functional CFTR may be required for Prevotella melaninogenica regulation of epithelial cell defense against Staphylococcus aureus.Journal of cystic fibrosis : official journal of the European Cystic Fibrosis Society · 2026Article
- CD4Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2026Article
- Phage characterization analysis in respiratory samples from infected patients based on metagenomic next-generation sequencing.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2026Article
- Non-pharmaceutical interventions restructured the upper respiratory bacterial microbiota in children under 2 during COVID-19: implications for infection control strategies.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Presence of Dolosigranulum pigrum in the nasopharynx and its relationship with respiratory health status in paediatric population.PloS one · 2026Article
- Innovative engineering approaches to model host-microbiome interactions in vitro.Advanced drug delivery reviews · 2025Review
- Microbiota diversity and differences in the respiratory tract of children with pneumonia.Pediatric investigation · 2025Article
- Enrichment of Streptococcus oralis in respiratory microbiome enhance innate immunity and protects against influenza infection.Signal transduction and targeted therapy · 2025Article
- Article
- Immunomodulation in Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infection: Mechanisms, Therapeutic Targets, and Clinical Implications.Microorganisms · 2025Review
- Profiling the nasopharyngeal Microbiome in patients with community-acquired pneumonia caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae: diagnostic challenges and ecological insights.Medical microbiology and immunology · 2025Article
- Lung and gut microbiota profiling in intensive care unit patients: a prospective pilot study.BMC infectious diseases · 2025Observational
- Oropharyngeal Staphylococcus aureus is linked to higher mortality in long-term aged care residents.Age and ageing · 2025Article
65 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
12 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Bacterial pneumonia is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in elderly. We hypothesize that dysbiosis between regular residents of the upper respiratory tract (URT) microbiome, that is balance between commensals and potential pathogens, is involved in pathogen overgrowth and consequently disease. We compared oropharyngeal microbiota of elderly pneumonia patients (n=100) with healthy elderly (n=91) by 16S-rRNA-based sequencing and verified our findings in young adult pneumonia patients (n=27) and young healthy adults (n=187). Microbiota profiles differed significantly between elderly pneumonia patients and healthy elderly (PERMANOVA, P<0.0005). Highly similar differences were observed between microbiota profiles of young adult pneumonia patients and their healthy controls. Clustering resulted in 11 (sub)clusters including 95% (386/405) of samples. We observed three microbiota profiles strongly associated with pneumonia (P<0.05) and either dominated by lactobacilli (n=11), Rothia (n=51) or Streptococcus (pseudo)pneumoniae (n=42). In contrast, three other microbiota clusters (in total n=183) were correlated with health (P<0.05) and were all characterized by more diverse profiles containing higher abundances of especially Prevotella melaninogenica, Veillonella and Leptotrichia. For the remaining clusters (n=99), the association with health or disease was less clear. A decision tree model based on the relative abundance of five bacterial community members in URT microbiota showed high specificity of 95% and sensitivity of 84% (89% and 73%, respectively, after cross-validation) for differentiating pneumonia patients from healthy individuals. These results suggest that pneumonia in elderly and young adults is associated with dysbiosis of the URT microbiome with bacterial overgrowth of single species and absence of distinct anaerobic bacteria. Whether the observed microbiome changes are a cause or a consequence of the development of pneumonia or merely coincide with disease status remains a question for future research.
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