Effect of COVID-19 on the characteristics and outcome of patients who have otitis media with effusion: a case-control study.

BACKGROUND: Few studies have examined the otologic symptoms of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The objective of this study was to identify the effect of COVID-19 on the characteristics and outcomes of patients who have otitis media with effusion (OME). METHODS: This case-control study compared the characteristics and outcomes of OME patients who did or did not have COVID-19. A total of 65 patients with previous COVID-19 and 40 patients who did not have COVID-19 (controls) were enrolled from October 1, 2022 to January 31, 2023 at a single institution in China. Demographics, medical histories, morbidities, hearing test results, treatments, and outcomes of the two groups were compared. RESULTS: The COVID-19 group had significantly better outcomes from OME than the control group, with higher rates of complete resolution (64.6% vs. 30%) and improvement (30.8% vs. 17.5%), and a lower rate of persistent OME (4.6% vs. 52.5%). Previous COVID-19 was independently associated with a more favorable OME outcome in three multivariate logistic regression models. The COVID-19 group also had a greater improvement in hearing threshold based on air-bone gap measurements. CONCLUSION: The outcomes of OME patients who had previous COVID-19 were generally good, in that most patients responded well to treatment and achieved complete resolution or improvement within one month.

Oral-microbiome-derived signatures enable non-invasive diagnosis of laryngeal cancers.

BACKGROUND: Recent studies have uncovered that the microbiota in patients with head and neck cancers is significantly altered and may drive cancer development. However, there is limited data to explore the unique microbiota of laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC), and little is known regarding whether the oral microbiota can be utilized as an early diagnostic biomarker. METHODS: Using 16S rRNA gene sequencing, we characterized the microbiome of oral rinse and tissue samples from 77 patients with LSCC and 76 control patients with vocal polyps, and then performed bioinformatic analyses to identify taxonomic groups associated with clinicopathologic features. RESULTS: Multiple bacterial genera exhibited significant differences in relative abundance when stratifying by histologic and tissue type. By exploiting the distinct microbial abundance and identifying the tumor-associated microbiota taxa between patients of LSCC and vocal polyps, we developed a predictive classifier by using rinse microbiota as key features for the diagnosis of LSCC with 85.7% accuracy. CONCLUSION: This is the first evidence of taxonomical features based on the oral rinse microbiome that could diagnose LSCC. Our results revealed the oral rinse microbiome is an understudied source of clinical variation and represents a potential non-evasive biomarker of LSCC.