More diverse school microbiota may provide better protection against respiratory infections for school staff.

ABSTRACT: Our understanding of how exposure to school microbiota affects the respiratory health of staff and students in schools is limited. We examined the associations between exposure to school microbiota and respiratory and gastrointestinal infections. We performed an epidemiologic analysis of 1,529 school employees in the U.S. A questionnaire was administered to school staff to collect health information, and floor dust was vacuumed from 500 classrooms in 50 schools. Fungal internal transcribed spacer region and bacterial 16S amplicon sequencing were performed with extracted genomic DNA using Illumina Mi-Seq platform. The resulting DNA sequences were clustered into operational taxonomic units (OTUs). Staff were assigned the school-building-specific floor average number of bacterial or fungal OT

SUBMITTER: Park JH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11907276 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature