Introduction. Acute respiratory infections cover majority of pediatric outpatient visits and hospitalizations, especially during the cold and flu epidemic season.Aim. To evaluate the effect of Baс-Set Cold/Flu probiotic on the clinical manifestations and severity of acute respiratory infections (ARI) along with standard symptomatic therapy during periods of increased morbidity (November 2023 – March 2024).Materials and methods. This study was an open-label, observational, multicenter study. The number of subjects was 234: 111 volunteers in the first group (experimental) and 123 volunteers in the second group (control) aged from 2 to 10 years inclusive (mean age 5.79) with a diagnosis of ARI. Patients of the first group took Bac-Set Cold/Flu probiotic along with standard symptomatic therapy in comparison with control group which took a standard symptomatic therapy only. Statistical analysis was performed using the R programming language.Results and discussion. The use of probiotic significantly reduced the number of complications and the prescription of antibiotic therapy by more than three times (5% in the probiotic group versus 17% in the control group). A significant difference was revealed in the total duration of the disease (the maximum period from the first symptom of fever to the fact of complete recovery, – absence of fever within last 48 hours) between groups (Mann- Whitney test, p-value = 0.017). In the experimental group, the average duration of illness was 6.2 ± 3.7 days, in the control group – 7.2 ± 3.1 days. A statistically significant difference in the duration of fever was also revealed (Mann-Whitney test, p-value = 0.006). In the control group, on average, fever lasted 1 day longer. The median maximum temperature in the probiotic group was 0.5 degrees lower at the 2nd visit compared to the control group. The use of the probiotic did not affect the symptoms of cough, nasal congestion and the color of nasal discharge, but a trend was recorded for the effect on the symptoms of sore throat.Conclusion. The use of a probiotic reduced the number of complications and the prescription of antibiotic therapy by more than three times, the duration of the disease and fever.

The first metagenomic study of gut microbiota in patients with the alcohol dependence syndrome (ADS) has been performed in the whole-genome sequencing (“shotgun”) format. Taxonomic analysis revealed...

Introduction. Acute respiratory infections (ARI) are one of the main causes of morbidity and mortality from infectious diseases in the world. Respiratory infections can be caused by pathogens of various etiologies: viruses, bacteria, mycoplasmas, etc. Rapid and accurate identification of pathogens, such as bacteria, in biological samples is an important task, for which 16S rRNA gene sequencing using new generation platforms is used.The objective was a comparative analysis of the qualitative characteristics of the oropharyngeal microbiome of healthy volunteers and patients with ARI of unknown etiology based on the 16S rRNA gene sequencing.Methods and materials. Using V3–V4 region of 16S rRNA Illumina MiSeq sequences from oropharyngeal swabs, we analyzed the microbiome of hospitalized patients with ARI symptoms and healthy patients.Results. In this study, we conducted V3–V4 region of 16S rRNA sequencing analyses of the oropharyngeal samples from 116 hospitalized patients with ARI symptoms and 81 healthy patients. Patients with ARI exhibited higher abundance of opportunistic pathogens, particularly Staphylococcus, Ralstonia, Aeribacillus, Acinetobacter baumannii, Methylobacterium-Methylorubrum, Rhodococcus equi. In the control samples, normal commensal respiratory tract microbiota, such as Neisseria, Prevotella, Fusobacterium, Veilonella was dominated.Conclusions. The microbiota samples of hospitalized patients with ARI showed a predominance of opportunistic and potentially pathogenic microbiota, while normal representatives of the respiratory tract microbiota predominate in healthy volunteers. For a more detailed analysis, data on the species composition of the microbiota is required, which can be obtained by sequencing the complete sequence of the 16S rRNA gene.

Summary: Metagenomic surveys of human microbiota are becoming increasingly widespread in academic research as well as in food and pharmaceutical industries and clinical context. Intuitive tools for exploration of experimental data are of high interest to researchers. Knomics-Biota is a Web-based resource for exploratory analysis of human gut metagenomes. Users can generate analytical reports that correspond to common experimental schemes (like case-control study or paired comparison). Statistical analysis and visualizations of microbiota composition are provided in association with the external factors and in the context of thousands of publicly available datasets. Availability and Implementation: The Web-service is available at https://biota.knomics.ru . Contact: anna.popenko@knomics.ru or a.tyakht@gmail.com . Supplementary information: Supplementary figures are available at Bioinformatics online.