Shaping the subway microbiome through probiotic-based sanitation during the COVID-19 emergency: a pre–post case–control study
Open accessAbstract
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the extent to which the public transportation environment, such as in subways, may be important for the transmission of potential pathogenic microbes among humans, with the possibility of rapidly impacting large numbers of people. For these reasons, sanitation procedures, including massive use of chemical disinfection, were mandatorily introduced during the emergency and remain in place. However, most chemical disinfectants have temporary action and a high environmental impact, potentially enhancing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) of the treated microbes. By contrast, a biological and eco-sustainable probiotic-based sanitation (PBS) procedure was recently shown to stably shape the microbiome of treated environments, providing effective and long-term control of pathogens and AMR spread in addition to activity against SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19. Our study aims to assess the applicability and impact of PBS compared with chemical disinfectants based on their effects on the surface microbiome of a subway environment. Results: The train microbiome was characterized by both culture-based and culture-independent molecular methods, including 16S rRNA NGS and real-time qPCR microarray, for profiling the train bacteriome and its resistome and to identify and quantify specific human pathogens. SARS-CoV-2 presence was also assessed in parallel using digital droplet PCR. The results showed a clear and significant decrease in bacterial and fungal pathogens (p < 0.001) as well as of SARS-CoV-2 presence (p < 0.01), in the PBS-treated train compared with the chemically disinfected control train. In addition, NGS profiling evidenced diverse clusters in the population of air vs. surface while demonstrating the specific action of PBS against pathogens rather than the entire train bacteriome. Conclusions: The data presented here provide the first direct assessment of the impact of different sanitation procedures on the subway microbiome, allowing a better understanding of its composition and dynamics and showing that a biological sanitation approach may be highly effective in counteracting pathogens and AMR spread in our increasingly urbanized and interconnected environment.
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PCHS usage during the COVID-19 pandemic showed significant effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 in both sanitary and non-sanitary environments.
“its usage was tested during the COVID-19 pandemic, showing significant effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 in both sanitary and non-sanitary environments [20, 36].”
From Profiling the resistome and virulome of Bacillus strains used for probiotic-based sanitation: a multicenter WGS analysis (2025) · cites this paper as [20]
The Results (Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 presence; page unavailable) report significantly fewer SARS-CoV-2 RNA-positive samples in the PCHS-treated subway train than in the control train. The Discussion (page unavailable) also refers to prior effectiveness in a hospital environment, but explicitly cautions that its RNA measurements do not establish the presence or removal of infectious virus. The claim therefore overstates this paper’s evidence of effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2, particularly across both settings. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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“…the hospital environment are often drugs, multidrug (MDR), or totally drug resistant (TDR), posing a significant threat to public health, as they can cause severe/lethal infections and spread to other sanitary and nonsanitary settings, including community environments and mass transport [17–20].”
Self-citation
- Authors
- D’Accolti, M., Soffritti, I., Bini, F., Mazziga, E., Cason, C., Comar, M., Volta, A., Bisi, M., Fumagalli, D., Mazzacane, S., & Caselli, E.
- Affiliations
- University of Ferrara (IT)
- IRCCS Materno Infantile Burlo Garofolo (IT)
- University of Trieste (IT)
- Azienda Trasporti Milanesi (Italy) (IT)
- Corresponding author
- Caselli, Elisabetta
- ORCID
- Venue
- Microbiome
- Published
- 2023-03-30
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 64-64
- ISSN
- 2049-2618 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC10060134
- OpenAlex
- W4361291080
- Cited by
- 27
- References
- 42
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 7
- FWCI
- 3.09
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Microbiome (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Institutional Research Information System University of Ferrara (University of Ferrara) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- ArTS Archivio della ricerca di Trieste (University of Trieste https://www.units.it/) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Università degli Studi di Ferrara (FAR 2021)
- National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Award Number 0001052)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis › Indoor Air Quality and Microbial Exposure
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Infectious Diseases › Infection Control in Healthcare
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine › Infection Control and Ventilation
- Keywords
- chemical disinfectants, SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 pandemic, surface microbiome, antimicrobial resistance, resistome, pathogen inactivation, public transport, fungal pathogens
- MeSH terms
- COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, Disinfectants, Humans, Railroads, RNA, Ribosomal, 16S, Sanitation, Case-Control Studies, Probiotics, Pandemics, Microbiota
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