Figure 2.

Altered bacterial microbiota biodiversity and composition in HFMD based on cohort matched age and sex. (A–D) Alpha diversity. Comparison of alpha-diversity indices (Shannon, observed ASVs, PD whole tree and Chao 1 index) between the HFMD and control groups (Wilcoxon rank-sum tests). (E, F) Principal coordinate analysis based on unweighted and weighted UniFrac distances revealed that the bacterial communities of patients with HFMD clustered separately from the bacterial communities of healthy control children. Each point represents a single sample, which is colored based on the group. PC1, PC2 and PC3 represent the top three principal coordinates that captured most of the diversity. The explanation of diversity captured by the coordinate is given as a percentage. (G) Relative abundance of the bacterial microbiota at the genus level. (H) Differences in the bacterial taxon abundance between patients with HMFD and control children by using Linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) analysis. HFMD-enriched taxa are indicated with a positive LDA score, and taxa enriched in healthy controls have a negative score. Only taxa meeting an LDA significance threshold of >3 are shown. LDA, linear discriminant analysis.