Maturation of respiratory microbiota and risk of respiratory infections in infants: a prospective cohort study

We aimed to assess the associations between environmental drivers, upper respiratory tract (URT) microbiota development, and the risk of RTIs in a cohort of 112 children over the first 12 months of life. We studied the nasopharyngeal microbiota of these children longitudinally from birth on (11 consecutive sample moments and maximum 3 samples during RTI/subject) by 16S-rRNA-based sequencing.