SARS‐CoV‐2 infection alters the gut microbiome in diabetes patients: A cross‐sectional study from Bangladesh

Abstract

AbstractPopulations of different South Asian nations including Bangladesh reportedly have a high risk of developing diabetes in recent years. This study aimed to investigate the differences in the gut microbiome of COVID‐19‐positive participants with or without type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) compared with healthy control subjects. Microbiome data of 30 participants with T2DM were compared with 22 age‐, sex‐, and body mass index (BMI)‐matched individuals. Clinical features were recorded while fecal samples were collected aseptically from the participants. Amplicon‐based (16S rRNA) metagenome analyses were employed to explore the dysbiosis of gut microbiota and its correlation with genomic and functional features in COVID‐19 patients with or without T2DM. Comparing the detected bacterial genera across the sample groups, 98 unique genera were identified, of which 9 genera had unique association with COVID‐19 T2DM patients. Among different bacterial groups, Shigella (25%), Bacteroides (23.45%), and Megamonas (15.90%) had higher mean relative abundances in COVID‐19 patients with T2DM. An elevated gut microbiota dysbiosis in T2DM patients with COVID‐19 was observed while some metabolic functional changes correlated with bidirectional microbiome dysbiosis between diabetes and non‐diabetes humans gut were also found. These results further highlight the possible association of COVID‐19 infection that might be linked with alteration of gut microbiome among T2DM patients.