A large-scale survey of the postmortem human microbiome, and its potential to provide insight into the living health condition.

ABSTRACT: The microbiome plays many roles in human health, often through the exclusive lens of clinical interest. The inevitable end point for all living hosts, death, has its own altered microbiome configurations. However, little is understood about the ecology and changes of microbial communities after death, or their potential utility for understanding the health condition of the recently living. Here we reveal distinct postmortem microbiomes of human hosts from a large-scale survey of death cases representing a predominantly urban population, and demonstrated these microbiomes reflected antemortem health conditions within 24-48 hours of death. Our results characterized microbial community structure and predicted function from 188 cases representing a cross-section of an industrial-urban populati

SUBMITTER: Pechal JL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5893548 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature