Urbanization-Associated Microbial Diversity Loss and Its Impact on Elderly Health: Integrating Environmental and Host Microbiome Dynamics.

Authors

Jianlou Yang, Haoyu Liu, Wei Zhang, Jingjing Cui, Xiaodong Xing, Chen Dong

Published in

Environmental microbiology. Volume 28. Issue 9. Pages e70414.

Abstract

Urbanization is strongly associated with microbial diversity loss in both built environments and elderly gut microbiomes, with significant health consequences. This study across 12 rural-to-urban care facilities in eastern China analysed 320 environmental and 120 faecal samples. Urbanization progressively reduced microbial alpha diversity in air, surfaces, and resident guts. Urban environments showed increased opportunistic pathogens and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), alongside decreased beneficial taxa and short-chain fatty acid pathways. Strong environment-host microbiome concordance was observed, with intensified microbial transmission in urban settings. Critically, environmental microbiome features mediated over 50% of urbanization's detrimental effects on resident frailty, inflammation, and cognitive decline. Models combining environmental and gut microbiome data accurately predicted frailty (AUC = 0.89). The findings highlight that urbanization-induced microbial alterations in care facilities are key mediators of elderly health decline, underscoring the need for microbiome-informed design to mitigate these risks.

PMID:
42727931
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 12 Sep 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.