Abstract
Indoor microbial communities have important implications for human health, especially in health-care institutes (HCIs). The factors that determine the diversity and composition of microbiomes in a built environment remain unclear. Herein, we used 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing to investigate the relationships between building attributes and surface bacterial communities among four HCIs located in three buildings. We examined the surface bacterial communities and environmental parameters in the buildings supplied with different ventilation types and compared the results using a Dirichlet multinomial mixture (DMM)-based approach. A total of 203 samples from the four HCIs were analyzed. Four bacterial communities were grouped using the DMM-based approach, which were highly similar to those in the 4 HCIs. The α-diversity and β-diversity in the naturally ventilated building were different from the conditioner-ventilated building. The bacterial source composition varied across each building. Nine genera were found as the core microbiota shared by all the areas, of which Acinetobacter, Enterobacter, Pseudomonas, and Staphylococcus are regarded as healthcare-associated pathogens (HAPs). The observed relationship between environmental parameters such as core microbiota and surface bacterial diversity suggests that we might manage indoor environments by creating new sanitation protocols, adjusting the ventilation design, and further understanding the transmission routes of HAPs.
Highlights
Humans live in health-care institutes (HCIs) during periods of hospitalization
The four healthcare institutes (HCIs) are located in three buildings: one regional hospital and one long-term care facilities (LTCFs) are located in the same building, and the remaining two are located apart from each other
We chose HCIs based on the fact that we can sample across a range of design and environmental factors and because the surface microbiomes of HCIs have implications for patient health
Summary
Humans live in health-care institutes (HCIs) during periods of hospitalization. The environments of HCIs are complex ecosystems that include trillions of microorganisms interacting with each other and with humans and their environment[1]. The development of culture-independent, high–throughput molecular sequencing approaches has transformed the study of microbial diversity in different hospital locations, as demonstrated by the recent explosion of research in the microbial ecology of neonatal intensive care units (ICUs)[5], respiratory care centers[6], and medical ICUs2, 7. Microbial taxa not commonly found outdoors were found indoors[1] Far, it remains unclear which of the sources is the key determinant or what environmental factors might determine the relative abundance of bacteria within and among HCIs. Here, we used the 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing approach to survey the environmental microbiome of four HCIs, consisting of two regional hospitals and two long-term care facilities (LTCFs). These vectors are generated from one of a finite number of Dirichlet mixture components, and the mixture components cluster
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