Shifts in human gut microbiome due to COVID-19

COVID-19, caused by an infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in March 2020. While some people developed severe illness and required medical care, many people reported only mild-to-moderate symptoms, if any at all. However, many of the infected individuals have experienced persisting symptoms or frequent other infections months after the initial infection even if they weren-t much impacted by the disease to begin with. Particularly with the emergence of new variants, many patients also reported gastrointestinal symptoms. Researchers from the University's Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine and the Luxembourg Institute of Health investigated the impact of mild-to moderate COVID-19 on the compositions and functionalities of the gut microbiome. Their results show an increased infective competence in the microbiome of COVID-19 individuals and these have recently been published in the scientific journal Microbiome . Impact on the gut microbiome's infective competence .