Diagnosing and tracing the pathogens of infantile infectious diarrhea by amplicon sequencing

BACKGROUND: Metagenomic methods have been widely applied to study the relationship between gut microbiota and human health. To test whether metagenomic amplicon sequencing could be an effective method to diagnose and trace the pathogens of infantile infectious diarrhea, the fecal samples of 20 diarrheic and 13 healthy infants were collected. After 16S rDNA amplicon sequencing, diversity analyses were carried out. The relationship between the pathogens of the gut microbiota and geography of patients was analyzed. RESULTS: The diversity of the gut microbiota in diarrheic infants was significantly lower than that of the gut microbiota in healthy ones and that, the composition of gut microbiota in the diarrheic group was significantly different than that of the gut microbiota in the healthy group. The results also indicated that in some of the patients, the amounts of Escherichia coli were significantly increased in the diarrheic infants, which was in agreement with the result of the qPCR analysis. Using a geographical map, we found some patterns between pathogen source and geographical location. This is helpful for an early warning of the disease. CONCLUSIONS: The method of using high-throughput DNA sequencing and a comprehensive and deep data analysis can be a new strategy to detect and trace pathogens in infantile infectious diarrhea. Trial registration Diagnosing and tracing the pathogens of infantile infectious diarrhea by amplicon sequencing, ChiCTR-DDD-1701088, Registered 16 March 2017-Retrospectively registered, http://www.chictr.org.cn/showproj.aspx?proj=18477