The article Can the microbiota explain why children are less infected than adolescents? has been recently published in the newspaper La Razón. In it, Professor Yolanda Sanz from IATA- CSIC explains what the Predicol Project is about, which she is carrying out together with her research team in more than 15 schools in the Valencian Community.
The Predicol Project researches the relationship between gut microbiota and protection against coronavirus infection according to age, based on previous observations that indicate that children under ten years of age are less infected with SARS-CoV-2 than teenagers, according to seroprevalence studies. This project is in line with another that began months ago – “Influence of the gut microbiome on Covid-19 infection and on the effectiveness of immunotherapy in cancer patients and controls-Bicoin“, funded by the CSIC Global Health Platform.
To carry out this research study, more than 1,000 schoolchildren, together with their family members, from more than 15 schools have volunteered to take part. “We are starting to analyse their microbiota before they become infected using next-generation sequencing techniques that allow us to obtain all the taxonomic information (percentage of different groups of bacteria), as well as the metagenome (the functions of the genes of the microorganisms that make up the microbiota),” according to Professor Sanz.
To read the full article, click on this link
Listen to the article