Abstract
Children’s daycare centers appear to be hubs of respiratory infectious disease transmission, yet there is only limited information about the airborne microbial communities that are present in daycare centers. We have investigated the microbial community of the air in a daycare center, including seasonal dynamics in the bacterial community and the presence of specific viral pathogens. We collected filters from the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system of a daycare center every two weeks over the course of a year. Amplifying and sequencing the 16S rRNA gene revealed that the air was dominated by Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, and Bacteroidetes that are commonly associated with the human skin flora. Clear seasonal differences in the microbial community were not evident; however, the community structure differed when the daycare center was closed and unoccupied for a 13-day period. These results suggest that human occupancy, rather than the environment, is the major driver in shaping the microbial community structure in the air of the daycare center. Using PCR for targeted viruses, we detected a seasonal pattern in the presence of respiratory syncytial virus that included the period of typical occurrence of the disease related to the virus; however, we did not detect the presence of adenovirus or rotavirus at any time.
Highlights
Understanding the microbial community structure of the built environment is important because humans spend >90% of their time in indoor environments [1], and evidence is accumulating that both the human and environmental microbiomes shape human health [2,3,4]
Of Betaproteobacteria and Bacilli in outdoor air compared to indoor air of a mechanically ventilated building. These results suggest that the bacterial community is more influenced by the outdoor environment when the daycare center is closed, due to the decrease in human occupancy
In studying the seasonal dynamics of bacteria in dust collected from office buildings, Rintala et al [53] did not find clear differences in microbial community structure between seasons. These results suggest that human occupancy, and the shedding of skin cells, is a major factor in determining the microbial community structure of airborne bacteria; and in heavily occupied environments such as daycare centers, schools, and offices, human occupancy has greater influence than does the outdoor environment in shaping the airborne microbiome
Summary
Understanding the microbial community structure of the built environment is important because humans spend >90% of their time in indoor environments [1], and evidence is accumulating that both the human and environmental microbiomes shape human health [2,3,4]. Studies have characterized the microbiome of indoor air in residences, health care facilities, university classrooms, offices, restrooms, subways, and other settings [5,6,7,8,9,10,11], but less is known about children’s daycare centers. Over 8 million children attend daycare in organized facilities in the United States [12]. Thacker et al [17] estimated that
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