Fig. 8

Associations between gut microbiota, somatic and neuropsychiatric symptoms in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. (a) Redundancy Analysis (RDA) plot showing the association between gut microbiome composition, somatic and neuropsychiatric symptoms, and COVID-19 severity. The x-axis represents RDA1 (4.9% of variation), and the y-axis represents RDA2 (1.4%). Each point represents an individual patient, color-coded by COVID-19 severity. Green arrows indicate the direction and strength of association with PHQ-15, PSS, HADS-A, and HADS-D. Labeled bacterial species show their associations with these factors. Density plots on the top and right margins show the distribution of samples along each axis. (b) Venn diagram of the resulting driver taxa from each COVID-19 severity group, low, moderate and critical, using the BakDrive interaction analysis followed by the BakDrive driver analysis. Genera that are bolded correspond to taxa that are above the total relative abundance threshold of 5%. (c) SpiecEasi, sparse and low-rank decomposition network analysis of gut microbiome species, illustrates the co-occurrence patterns of gut bacterial species associated with mental health indicators. Nodes represent bacterial species with a p<0.05 with any mental health index, while edges represent significant correlations between species. Node colors represent Spearman’s correlation between the microbe and the scores of the assessments. Together, these visualizations provide insights into the complex relationships between gut microbiome composition, mental health status, and COVID-19 severity, suggesting potential microbial signatures associated with different symptoms in the context of COVID-19 infection