Mycobiome changes in the vitreous of post fever retinitis patients.

Suresh Yenugu,Kotakonda Arunasri,Gumpili Sai Prashanthi,Rajagopalaboopathi Jayasudha,Malleswarapu Mahesh,Rajeev R Pappuru,Mudit Tyagi,Sama Kalyana Chakravarthy,Sisinthy Shivaji

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0242138

Abstract

Fungi have been associated with various diseases of the eye like keratitis, uveitis and endophthalmitis. Despite this fact, fungal microbiome (mycobiome) studies compared to the bacterial microbiome studies have remained neglected. In the present study, using metagenomic sequencing, the mycobiomes of the vitreous of healthy control individuals (VC, n = 15) and individuals with post fever retinitis + non-PFR uveitis (PFR+, n = 9) were analysed and compared. The results indicated that Ascomycota was the most predominant phylum in both VC and PFR+ groups. Further, at the genera level it was observed that the abundance of 17 fungal genera were significantly different in post fever retinitis (PFR, n = 6) group compared to control group. Of these 17 genera, it was observed that 14 genera were relatively more abundant in PFR group and the remaining 3 genera in the VC group. Genus Saccharomyces, a commensal of the gut and skin, was predominantly present in the vitreous of both the cohorts, however it was significantly less abundant in PFR group. Further, significant increase in the genera that have a pathogenic interaction with the host were observed in PFR group. On the whole the mycobiome in both the groups differed significantly and formed two distinct clusters in the heatmap and Principal co-ordinate analysis. These results demonstrate significant changes in the mycobiome from the vitreous of post fever retinitis patients compared to healthy controls thus implying that dysbiotic changes in the fungal vitreous microbiome are associated with PFR.

Highlights

Fungi are causative agents of several infections of the eye and range from infections of the ocular surface as in keratitis and could cause intraocular infections as in endophthalmitis, uveitis and retinitis
Our results indicated significant differences in the mycobiome in the vitreous of post Post fever retinitis (PFR) patients compared to healthy controls implying that dysbiotic changes in the fungal vitreous microbiome are associated with PFR
Reads assigned to fungi comprised a total of 6.3127 million reads with 359506 and 102233 reads assigned to fungi in the control and PFR+ groups respectively (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

Fungi are causative agents of several infections of the eye and range from infections of the ocular surface as in keratitis and could cause intraocular infections as in endophthalmitis, uveitis and retinitis. Fungi could infect eyelids, conjunctiva, and lacrimal system as in blepharitis, conjunctivitis and dacryoadenitis. Fungal infection of paranasal sinuses and other structures close to the orbit as in fungal sinusitis and acute invasive fungal rhinosinusitis was reported [1, 2]. Among the regions of eye that the fungi infect, the ocular surface infections appear to be most prevalent. The fungi causing ocular surface infections include.

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