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. 2023 Mar 7:13:1117673.
doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2023.1117673. eCollection 2023.

Conjunctival sac microbiome in anophthalmic patients: Flora diversity and the impact of ocular prosthesis materials

Hejia Zhao  1   2 , Yanjun Chen  1 , Yixu Zheng  1 , Jing Xu  1 , Chenyu Zhang  1   2 , Min Fu  3 , Ke Xiong  1
Affiliations

Conjunctival sac microbiome in anophthalmic patients: Flora diversity and the impact of ocular prosthesis materials

Hejia Zhao et al. Front Cell Infect Microbiol. .

Abstract

Purpose: To explore the changes of bacterial flora in anophthalmic patients wearing ocular prosthesis (OP) and the microbiome diversity in conditions of different OP materials.

Methods: A cross-sectional clinical study was conducted, involving 19 OP patients and 23 healthy subjects. Samples were collected from the upper, lower palpebral, caruncle, and fornix conjunctiva. 16S rRNA sequencing was applied to identify the bacterial flora in the samples. The eye comfort of each OP patient was determined by a questionnaire. In addition, demographics information of each participant was also collected.

Results: The diversity and richness of ocular flora in OP patients were significantly higher than that in healthy subjects. The results of flora species analysis also indicated that in OP patients, pathogenic microorganisms such as Escherichia Shigella and Fusobacterium increased significantly, while the resident flora of Lactobacillus and Lactococcus decreased significantly. Within the self-comparison of OP patients, compared with Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA), prosthetic material of glass will lead to the increased colonization of opportunistic pathogens such as Alcaligenes, Dermabacter and Spirochaetes, while gender and age have no significant impact on ocular flora.

Conclusions: The ocular flora of OP patients was significantly different from that of healthy people. Abundant colonization of pathogenic microorganisms may have an important potential relationship with eye discomfort and eye diseases of OP patients. PMMA, as an artificial eye material, demonstrated potential advantages in reducing the colonization of opportunistic pathogens.

Keywords: anophthalmia; conjunctival sac; microbiome; ocular prosthesis; ocular surface flora.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The abscissa of the raffection curve represents the proportion of the number of sequences extracted by resampling, and the ordinate represents the number of different species or diversity values.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) Differences in relative mean abundances of genus in ocular microbiota between OP patients and Control subjects. (B) Evolution tree shows OTU level. (C) Alpha diversity analysis of conjunctival microbiota between OP patients and Control subjects.(D) Beta diversity analysis of ocular flora communities in OP patients and Control subjects visualized by PCoA plot. (E) The heatmap shows the dominant bacteria of OP group and Control group. **: P<0.01,****: P<0.0001.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Histogram of dominate bacteria between Control group and OP group. (*: P<0.05; ***:P<0.001; ns: No Sense).
Figure 4
Figure 4
(A) Alpha diversity analysis of age level in OP patients. (B) PCoA plot shown the Beta diversity analysis of age level in OP patients. (C) Alpha diversity analysis of gender level in OP patients. (D) PCoA plot shown the Beta diversity analysis of gender level in OP patients. ns: No Sense.
Figure 5
Figure 5
(A) Differences of ocular microbiota between Glass, PMMA group and Control subjects. (B) Alpha diversity analysis between Glass group and PMMA group. (C) PCoA plot shown the Beta diversity analysis between Glass group and PMMA group. (D) The heatmap shows the dominant bacteria of Material term. (E) The heatmap shows the dominant bacteria of Material & Wearing Time term. (F) LEfSe analysis for characteristic colony search between Glass group and PMMA group. (G) LEfSe analysis for characteristic colony search between PMMA-down group and PMMA-up group. (H) LEfSe analysis for characteristic colony search between Glass-down group and Glass -up group. (I) Venn plot shows the intersection colony of PMMA-down group and Glass-down group. (J) Venn plot shows the intersection colony of Glass-up group and PMMA-up group. ns: No Sense.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Histogram of dominate bacteria between Control group, PMMA group and Glass Group. (*: P<0.05; **: P<0.01; ***:P<0.001; ns: No Sense).
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