Common Variable Immunodeficiency (CVID) is the most frequent symptomatic immune disorder characterized by reduced serum immunoglobulins. Patients often suffer from infectious and serious non-infectious complications which impact their life tremendously. The monogenic cause has been revealed in a minority of patients so far, indicating the role of multiple genes and environmental factors in CVID etiology. Using 16S and ITS rRNA amplicon sequencing, we analyzed the bacterial and fungal gut microbiota, respectively, in a group of 55 participants constituting of CVID patients and matched healthy controls including 16 case-control pairs living in the same household, to explore possible associations between gut microbiota composition and disease phenotype. We revealed less diverse and significantly altered bacterial but not fungal gut microbiota in CVID patients, which additionally appeared to be associated with a more severe disease phenotype. The factor of sharing the same household impacted both bacterial and fungal microbiome data significantly, although not as strongly as CVID diagnosis in bacterial assessment. Overall, our results suggest that gut bacterial microbiota is altered in CVID patients and may be one of the missing environmental drivers contributing to some of the symptoms and disease severity. Paired samples serving as controls will provide a better resolution between disease-related dysbiosis and other environmental confounders in future studies.

Central European Institute of Technology Masaryk University Brno Czechia

Centre for Cardiovascular Surgery and Transplantation Brno Czechia

Department of Allergology and Clinical Immunology Faculty of Medicine Charles University and University Hospital in Hradec Kralove Hradec Kralove Czechia

Department of Biology Faculty of Medicine Masaryk University Brno Czechia

Department of Clinical Immunology and Allergology Faculty of Medicine Masaryk University Brno Czechia

Department of Clinical Immunology and Allergology St Anne's University Hospital in Brno Brno Czechia

Faculty of Informatics Masaryk University Brno Czechia

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Patients With Common Variable Immunodeficiency (CVID) Show Higher Gut Bacterial Diversity and Levels of Low-Abundance Genes Than the Healthy Housemates