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Associations between species-level indoor microbiome, environmental characteristics, and asthma in junior high schools of Terengganu, Malaysia

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Abstract

Indoor microbiome exposure is important for asthma development, but current studies characterize the microbiome at the genus or above levels due to technical limitations. We aim to profile bacterial and fungal composition and concentration at the species level and assess its potential health effects. Four hundred sixty-three students from 8 junior high schools in Terengganu, Malaysia, were surveyed for asthma symptoms. Full-length PacBio amplicon sequencing and qPCR were conducted to quantify the absolute microbial concentration in the vacuum dust of the selected classroom. In total, 1358 bacterial and 358 fungal species were characterized, and drastic compositional variation was observed among classrooms. Three-level linear regression analyses revealed that taxa richness in Cyanobacteria were negatively associated with asthma (FDR < 0.001). The absolute concentration of Nocardioides exalbidus was protectively associated with asthma, and four bacteria species were positively associated with asthma (FDR < 0.1). Interestingly, all five species were recently isolated and characterized in Asian countries and never reported to associate with asthma. Indoor NO2 and formaldehyde concentration were associated with the overall bacterial community variation and fungal richness, respectively (p < 0.05). No environmental characteristics were directly associated with asthma, but indoor relative humidity, CO2 concentration, and weight of vacuum dust were associated with the asthma-related species (p < 0.05), suggesting a potential indirect health effect on students. This is the first study to characterize indoor microbiome and asthma-associated microorganisms at the species level, representing a region-specific microbiome exposure pattern in a tropical Asian country.

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Data availability

The raw sequence data were deposited in the Genome Sequence Archive with accession numbers CRA002825 and CRA002876.

Code availability

Not applicable.

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Funding

The study was funded by the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (2020A1515010845 and 2021A1515010492) for financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Protein Function and Regulation in Agricultural Organisms, College of Life Sciences, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, 510642, People’s Republic of China

    Xi Fu, Yi Meng, Yanling Li, Xunhua Zhu, Qianqian Yuan, Jun Wu, Peiqiang Mu & Yu Sun

  2. School of Public Health, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Xi Fu

  3. Key Laboratory of Zoonosis of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, 510642, People’s Republic of China

    Yi Meng, Yanling Li, Xunhua Zhu, Qianqian Yuan, Jun Wu, Peiqiang Mu & Yu Sun

  4. Guangdong Laboratory for Lingnan Modern Agriculture, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, 510642, Guangdong, China

    Yi Meng, Yanling Li, Xunhua Zhu, Qianqian Yuan, Jun Wu, Peiqiang Mu & Yu Sun

  5. Gombak District Health Office, Ministry of Health, Batu Caves, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

    Aminnuddin Ma’pol

  6. Universiti Selangor, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia

    Jamal Hisham Hashim

  7. Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, UPM, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia

    Zailina Hashim

  8. Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Dept. of Medical Science, University Hospital, Uppsala University, 75237, Uppsala, Sweden

    Gunilla Wieslander, Juan Wang & Dan Norbäck

  9. Asia Pacific Research, ALK-Abello A/S, Guangzhou, China

    Yi-Wu Zheng, Xu-Xin Lai & Michael Dho Spangfort

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  1. Xi Fu
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  2. Yi Meng
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  3. Yanling Li
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Contributions

AM, JHH, ZH, GW, and DN collected dust samples and environmental and health data. YS and DN designed the project. YS, XF, YL, YM, XZ, QY, JW, and PM carried out the analysis. YS, XF, and DN drafted the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yu Sun.

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Xi Fu and Yi Meng contributed equally to this work

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Fu, X., Meng, Y., Li, Y. et al. Associations between species-level indoor microbiome, environmental characteristics, and asthma in junior high schools of Terengganu, Malaysia. Air Qual Atmos Health 15, 1043–1055 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-021-01080-0

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