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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Microbiomes
Sec. Host and Microbe Associations
Volume 3 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frmbi.2024.1457940

Staphylococcus aureus carriage is associated with microbiome composition in the nares and oropharynx, not the hand, of monozygotic twins

Provisionally accepted
Mark R Dalman Mark R Dalman 1*W Brian Simison W Brian Simison 2Danny Nielsen Danny Nielsen 3Sabana Bhatta Sabana Bhatta 4Noor Ramahi Noor Ramahi 4Clair Yee Clair Yee 4Dipendra Thapiliya Dipendra Thapiliya 4Jhalka Kadariya Jhalka Kadariya 4Shanice Cheatham Shanice Cheatham 4Hailee Olson Hailee Olson 4Tara C Smith Tara C Smith 4
  • 1 College of Podiatric Medicine, Kent State University, Kent, United States
  • 2 California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, California, United States
  • 3 University of Nevada, Reno, Reno, Nevada, United States
  • 4 Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background: Staphylococcus aureus is a gram-positive bacterium commonly found in the nares and oropharynx of one in three individuals and has the potential to cause significant health problems. With antibiotic resistant strains causing 11,000 deaths yearly and ~2% of the population nasally colonized with MRSA, a search for predictive markers and associative relationships between carriage have been long-sought goals. Within our study, we leveraged monozygotic twin participants in concert with multi-site microbiome analyses to characterize impacts of S. aureus on composition. Results: We recruited 147 monozygotic twin pairs and characterized three sites: nares, oropharynx, and hand microbiomes using 16S rRNA v3-v4 sequencing in addition to S. aureus carriage status. Prevalence of S. aureus was highest in the oropharynx followed by nares and hand with concordance between twin pairs highest in the nares, followed by oropharynx. The detection of S. aureus was statistically correlated with differences in microbiome composition across sites, as indicated by beta diversity and DESeq2 analyses. Microbiome composition was most similar in twins' nares that were S. aureus culture positive concordant, whereas twins that were culture negative concordant had the most similarity in the Oropharynx. Of significance, Moraxella nonliquefacians and Capnocytophaga were inversely associated with S. aureus in the nares and oropharynx, respectively. Conclusions: This improved understanding of S. aureus colonization on nares, oropharynx, and hand microbiomes in monozygotic twin pairs is a further step towards unraveling the degree to which the microbiome are influenced by host genetics and S. aureus carriage.

    Keywords: microbiome, 16S rRNA, Staphylococcus aureus, monozygotic twins, Nares, Oropharynx, Hand, carriage

    Received: 01 Jul 2024; Accepted: 06 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Dalman, Simison, Nielsen, Bhatta, Ramahi, Yee, Thapiliya, Kadariya, Cheatham, Olson and Smith. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Mark R Dalman, College of Podiatric Medicine, Kent State University, Kent, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.