Associations of Microbial Diversity with Age and Other Clinical Variables among Pediatric Chronic Rhinosinusitis (CRS) Patients

Chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) is a heterogenous disease that causes persistent paranasal sinus inflammation in children. Microorganisms are thought to contribute to the etiology and progression of CRS. Culture-independent microbiome analysis offers deeper insights into sinonasal microbial diversity and microbe–disease associations than culture-based methods. To date, CRS-related microbiome studies have mostly focused on the adult population, and only one study has characterized the pediatric CRS microbiome. In this study, we analyzed the bacterial diversity of adenoid tissue, adenoid swab, maxillary sinus, and sinus wash samples from 45 pediatric CRS patients recruited from the Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital (JHACH) in St. Petersburg, FL, USA. The alpha diversity in these samples was associated with baseline nasal steroid use, leukotriene receptor antagonist (LTRA) use, and total serum immunoglobulin (Ig) E (IgE) level. Streptococcus, Moraxella, and Haemophilus spp. were most frequently identified from sinus cultures and the sequenced 16S rRNA gene content. Comparative analyses combining our samples with the samples from the previous microbiome study revealed differentially abundant genera between patients with pediatric CRS and healthy controls, including Cutibacterium and Moraxella. Additionally, the abundances of Streptobacillus and Staphylococcus were consistently correlated with age in both adenoid- and sinus-derived samples. Our study uncovers new associations of alpha diversity with clinical parameters, as well as associations of specific genera with disease status and age, that can be further investigated.