Recently, Professor Huang Shenghai from School of Life Sciences and School of Basic Medicine of AHMU, together with the research teams of Dr. Han Maozhen from School of Life Sciences of AHMU, Academician Wu Fengchang from Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences and Professor Wu Yonggui from the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, published a paper entitled “Dynamic changes in host immune system and gut microbiota are associated with the production of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies” in Gut (IF=31.793), a leading international journal in gastroenterology and hepatology, which revealed the dynamic changes of immune system and gut microbiota and their associations with the production of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies.
This work was supported by Grants for the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Major Project of Natural Science Research of Anhui Education Department, the Fund of Excellent Talents in Colleges and Universities of Anhui Province, Anhui Provincial Natural Science Foundation, etc. Dr. Han Maozhen from School of Life Sciences, is the first author. Huang Yixuan, a graduate student from The First School of Clinical Medicine (The First Affiliated Hospital), and Gui Hongya, Xiao Yixuan, graduate students from School of Basic Medical Sciences, are the co-first authors. Professor Huang Shenghai, Academician Wu Fengchang and Professor Wu Yonggui are the co-corresponding authors, AHMU being the affiliation of the first authors and corresponding authors.
Thirty healthy volunteers were recruited and fecal and blood samples were collected at multiple time points to monitor their responses to the doses of Sinovac vaccine from multiple perspectives. Through routine blood test, flow cytometry and ELISA, the blood immunological indices, immune cell subsets and antibodies levels were measured, respectively, while by whole-genome shotgun sequencing, the structure of gut microbiota communities was profiled.
The results showed that a majority of the volunteers could produce SARS-CoV-2 antibodies within 2 weeks after receiving two doses of the vaccine. In terms of gut microbiota, although the alpha diversities of the human gut microbial communities did not significantly differ, a significant difference in the human gut microbial compositions was found among different time points during the vaccination process. Furthermore, the comparison of the gut microbiota of healthy individuals who vaccinated and COVID-19 patients with different clinical diagnoses suggested that the alterations of gut microbiota during vaccination were not as substantial as those caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection. Besides, the study also revealed that a number of gut microbes were significantly associated with the production of SARS CoV-2 antibodies, and a variation partitioning analysis showed that the production of antibodies is mainly affected by the gut microbiome (22%) and body features (18%), suggesting that the gut microbiota played an important role in the production of COVID-19 antibodies.
The study systematically investigated the dynamic changes of the hosts’ immune system (including lymphocytes and cytokines), gut microbiota and antibodies, and linked these factors with the production of antibodies. The research results provide a new perspective for evaluating the safety and effectiveness of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and formulating treatment plans for COVID-19 patients, and alleviate public concerns and fears about the vaccination.
The article is available athttp://gut.bmj.com/lookup/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=36207022