Nasopharyngeal metagenomic deep sequencing data, Lancaster, UK, 2014-2015

Nasopharyngeal swabs were taken from volunteers attending a general medical practice and a general hospital in Lancaster, UK, and at Lancaster University, in the winter of 2014–2015. 51 swabs were selected based on high RNA yield and allocated to deep sequencing pools as follows: patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; asthmatics; adults with no respiratory symptoms; adults with feverish respiratory symptoms; adults with respiratory symptoms and presence of antibodies against influenza C; paediatric patients with respiratory symptoms (2 pools); adults with influenza C infection (2 pools), giving a total of 9 pools. Illumina sequencing was performed, with data yields per pool in the range of 345.6 megabases to 14 gigabases after removal of reads aligning to the human genome. The data were deposited in the Sequence Read Archive at NCBI, and constitute a resource for study of the viral, bacterial and fungal metagenome of the human nasopharynx in healthy and diseased states and comparison with other metagenomic studies on the human respiratory tract.

Influenza C in Lancaster, UK, in the winter of 2014-2015

Influenza C is not included in the annual seasonal influenza vaccine, and has historically been regarded as a minor respiratory pathogen. However, recent work has highlighted its potential role as a cause of pneumonia in infants. We performed nasopharyngeal or nasal swabbing and/or serum sampling (n = 148) in Lancaster, UK, over the winter of 2014-2015. Using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), we obtain seropositivity of 77%. By contrast, only 2 individuals, both asymptomatic adults, were influenza C-positive by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Deep sequencing of nasopharyngeal samples produced partial sequences for 4 genome segments in one of these patients. Bayesian phylogenetic analysis demonstrated that the influenza C genome from this individual is evolutionarily distant to those sampled in recent years and represents a novel genome constellation, indicating that it may be a product of a decades-old reassortment event. Although we find no evidence that influenza C was a significant respiratory pathogen during the winter of 2014-2015 in Lancaster, we confirm previous observations of seropositivity in the majority of the population. (170 words).