16S rRNA gene sequencing of oropharyngeal swabs of healthcare workers.

A total of 65 full-time healthcare workers from coronary care unit (CCU, 12), intensive care unit (ICU, 16), operating room (OR, 16) and the department of respiratory medicine (RES, 21) of Linfen Central Hospital were recruited. Subjects were excluded if they had symptoms of respiratory tract, were treated with antibiotics in three months prior to sampling, or had worked less than one year. Fresh oropharyngeal swabs were collected for DNA extraction.We amplified the corresponding hypervariable regions (V2, V3, V4, V6-7, V8 and V9) of the 16S rRNA with two primer sets in Ion 16S Metagenomics Kit (ThermoFisher Scientific, UK). Purified amplicons were ligated with barcodes to prepare the libraries. Then libraries were pooled in equimolar amounts on chip 530 and sequenced to single-end, 250-base-pair reads on an Ion GeneStudio S5 System (ThermoFisher Scientific, USA) based on Ion Reporter metagenomics workflow (Ion 16S mNGS).We provided the profile of oral microbiome of healthcare workers and highlighted the markable role of HCIs environment played in this study. Our study provides a reference for further understanding the oral microbiological characteristics of healthcare workers. In light of our results, we propose that continuous monitoring of oral microbiome of healthcare workers from different clinical scenarios should be considered to improve health.