Substantial overlap between symptomatic and asymptomatic genitourinary microbiota states

From BugSigDB
Reviewed Marked as Reviewed by Folakunmi on 2024-3-13
Citation
PMID PubMed identifier for scientific articles.
DOI Digital object identifier for electronic documents.
URI
Authors
Adu-Oppong B, Thänert R, Wallace MA, Burnham CD, Dantas G
Journal
Microbiome
Year
2022
Keywords:
Clinical diagnostics, Dysbiosis, Genitourinary microbiome, Urinary tract infections
BACKGROUND: The lack of a definition of urinary microbiome health convolutes diagnosis of urinary tract infections (UTIs), especially when non-traditional uropathogens or paucity of bacteria are recovered from symptomatic patients in routine standard-of-care urine tests. Here, we used shotgun metagenomic sequencing to characterize the microbial composition of asymptomatic volunteers in a set of 30 longitudinally collected urine specimens. Using permutation tests, we established a range of asymptomatic microbiota states, and use these to contextualize the microbiota of 122 urine specimens collected from patients with suspected UTIs diagnostically categorized by standard-of-care urinalysis within that range. Finally, we used a standard-of-care culture protocol to evaluate the efficiency of culture-based recovery of the urinary microbiota. RESULTS: The majority of genitourinary microbiota in individals suspected to have UTI overlapped with the spectrum of asymptomatic microbiota states. Longitudinal characterization of the genitourinary microbiome in urine specimens collected from asymptomatic volunteers revealed fluctuations of microbial functions and taxonomy over time. White blood cell counts from urinalysis suggested that urine specimens categorized as 'insignificant', 'contaminated', or 'no-growth' by conventional culture methods frequently showed signs of urinary tract inflammation, but this inflammation is not associated with genitourinary microbiota dysbiosis. Comparison of directly sequenced urine specimens with standard-of-care culturing confirmed that culture-based diagnosis biases genitourinary microbiota recovery towards the traditional uropathogens Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae. CONCLUSION: Here, we utilize shotgun metagenomic sequencing to establish a baseline of asymptomatic genitourinary microbiota states. Using this baseline we establish substantial overlap between symptomatic and asymptomatic genitourinary microbiota states. Our results establish that bacterial presence alone does not explain the onset of clinical symptoms. Video Abstract.

Experiment 1


Reviewed Marked as Reviewed by Folakunmi on 2024-3-13

Curated date: 2024/03/05

Curator: MyleeeA

Revision editor(s): MyleeeA

Subjects

Location of subjects
United States of America
Host species Species from which microbiome was sampled. Contact us to have more species added.
Homo sapiens
Body site Anatomical site where microbial samples were extracted from according to the Uber Anatomy Ontology
Urine Urine,urine
Condition The experimental condition / phenotype studied according to the Experimental Factor Ontology
Urinary tract infection INFECTION, URINARY TRACT,TRACT, INFECTION OF URINARY,urinary tract infection,urinary tract infection (disease),Urinary tract infection
Group 0 name Corresponds to the control (unexposed) group for case-control studies
No Growth
Group 1 name Corresponds to the case (exposed) group for case-control studies
Culture Positive
Group 1 definition Diagnostic criteria applied to define the specific condition / phenotype represented in the case (exposed) group
Patients with urine specimen with significant growth of 1–2 uropathogenic species at ≥10^5 colony forming units (CFU)/mL
Group 0 sample size Number of subjects in the control (unexposed) group
51
Group 1 sample size Number of subjects in the case (exposed) group
48
Antibiotics exclusion Number of days without antibiotics usage (if applicable) and other antibiotics-related criteria used to exclude participants (if any)
2 Weeks

Lab analysis

Sequencing type
WMS
16S variable region One or more hypervariable region(s) of the bacterial 16S gene
Not specified
Sequencing platform Manufacturer and experimental platform used for quantifying microbial abundance
Illumina

Statistical Analysis

Data transformation Data transformation applied to microbial abundance measurements prior to differential abundance testing (if any).
relative abundances
Statistical test
LEfSe
Significance threshold p-value or FDR threshold used for differential abundance testing (if any)
0.05
MHT correction Have statistical tests be corrected for multiple hypothesis testing (MHT)?
Yes
LDA Score above Threshold for the linear discriminant analysis (LDA) score for studies using the popular LEfSe tool
2
Confounders controlled for Confounding factors that have been accounted for by stratification or model adjustment
Confounders controlled for: "medication" is not in the list (abnormal glucose tolerance, acetaldehyde, acute graft vs. host disease, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, acute myeloid leukemia, adenoma, age, AIDS, alcohol consumption measurement, alcohol drinking, ...) of allowed values.medication

Alpha Diversity

Shannon Estimator of species richness and species evenness: more weight on species richness
unchanged
Richness Number of species
unchanged

Signature 1

Reviewed Marked as Reviewed by Folakunmi on 2024-3-13

Curated date: 2024/03/06

Curator: MyleeeA

Revision editor(s): MyleeeA, Folakunmi

Source: Fig 3 and Result Text (under "Diagnostic categories reflect different states of urobiome health, paragraph 2")

Description: Significantly enriched microbiota in suspected Urinary Tract Infection specimens from different clinical categories.

Abundance in Group 1: increased abundance in Culture Positive

NCBI Quality ControlLinks
Escherichia coli
Klebsiella oxytoca
Klebsiella pneumoniae

Revision editor(s): MyleeeA, Folakunmi

Signature 2

Reviewed Marked as Reviewed by Folakunmi on 2024-3-13

Curated date: 2024/03/06

Curator: MyleeeA

Revision editor(s): MyleeeA, Folakunmi

Source: Fig 3 and Result Text (under "Diagnostic categories reflect different states of urobiome health, paragraph 2")

Description: Significantly enriched microbiota in suspected Urinary Tract Infection specimens from different clinical categories.

Abundance in Group 1: decreased abundance in Culture Positive

NCBI Quality ControlLinks
Ascomycota
Cutibacterium acnes

Revision editor(s): MyleeeA, Folakunmi

Experiment 2


Reviewed Marked as Reviewed by Folakunmi on 2024-3-13

Curated date: 2024/03/06

Curator: MyleeeA

Revision editor(s): MyleeeA

Differences from previous experiment shown

Subjects

Group 0 name Corresponds to the control (unexposed) group for case-control studies
Insignificant Samples
Group 1 name Corresponds to the case (exposed) group for case-control studies
Culture Positive Samples
Group 0 sample size Number of subjects in the control (unexposed) group
17

Lab analysis

Statistical Analysis

Confounders controlled for Confounding factors that have been accounted for by stratification or model adjustment
Not specified

Alpha Diversity

Shannon Estimator of species richness and species evenness: more weight on species richness
unchanged
Richness Number of species
unchanged

Signature 1

Reviewed Marked as Reviewed by Folakunmi on 2024-3-13

Curated date: 2024/03/06

Curator: MyleeeA

Revision editor(s): MyleeeA, Folakunmi

Source: Fig 3 and Result Text (under "Diagnostic categories reflect different states of urobiome health, paragraph 2")

Description: Significantly enriched microbiota in suspected Urinary Tract Infection specimens from different clinical categories.

Abundance in Group 1: increased abundance in Culture Positive Samples

NCBI Quality ControlLinks
Klebsiella pneumoniae

Revision editor(s): MyleeeA, Folakunmi

Signature 2

Reviewed Marked as Reviewed by Folakunmi on 2024-3-13

Curated date: 2024/03/06

Curator: MyleeeA

Revision editor(s): MyleeeA, Folakunmi

Source: Fig 3 and Result Text (under "Diagnostic categories reflect different states of urobiome health, paragraph 2")

Description: Significantly enriched microbiota in suspected Urinary Tract Infection specimens from different clinical categories.

Abundance in Group 1: decreased abundance in Culture Positive Samples

NCBI Quality ControlLinks
Bacteroides ovatus
[Ruminococcus] torques

Revision editor(s): MyleeeA, Folakunmi

Experiment 3


Reviewed Marked as Reviewed by Folakunmi on 2024-3-13

Curated date: 2024/03/06

Curator: MyleeeA

Revision editor(s): MyleeeA

Differences from previous experiment shown

Subjects

Group 0 name Corresponds to the control (unexposed) group for case-control studies
Asymptomatic
Group 1 name Corresponds to the case (exposed) group for case-control studies
Insignificant Samples
Group 1 definition Diagnostic criteria applied to define the specific condition / phenotype represented in the case (exposed) group
Patients with specimen with bacterial growth <10^5 CFU/mL present during culturing but below the threshold for significance
Group 0 sample size Number of subjects in the control (unexposed) group
10
Group 1 sample size Number of subjects in the case (exposed) group
17

Lab analysis

Statistical Analysis

Alpha Diversity

Shannon Estimator of species richness and species evenness: more weight on species richness
unchanged
Richness Number of species
unchanged

Signature 1

Reviewed Marked as Reviewed by Folakunmi on 2024-3-13

Curated date: 2024/03/06

Curator: MyleeeA

Revision editor(s): MyleeeA

Source: Fig 3

Description: Significantly enriched microbiota in suspected Urinary Tract Infections specimens from different clinical categories.

Abundance in Group 1: decreased abundance in Insignificant Samples

NCBI Quality ControlLinks
Staphylococcus aureus

Revision editor(s): MyleeeA

Experiment 4


Reviewed Marked as Reviewed by Folakunmi on 2024-3-13

Curated date: 2024/03/06

Curator: MyleeeA

Revision editor(s): MyleeeA

Differences from previous experiment shown

Subjects

Group 1 name Corresponds to the case (exposed) group for case-control studies
No Growth
Group 1 definition Diagnostic criteria applied to define the specific condition / phenotype represented in the case (exposed) group
Patients with urine samples with no visible Microorganism growth (Bacterial/Fungal)
Group 1 sample size Number of subjects in the case (exposed) group
51

Lab analysis

Statistical Analysis

Alpha Diversity

Shannon Estimator of species richness and species evenness: more weight on species richness
unchanged
Richness Number of species
unchanged

Signature 1

Reviewed Marked as Reviewed by Folakunmi on 2024-3-13

Curated date: 2024/03/06

Curator: MyleeeA

Revision editor(s): MyleeeA

Source: Fig 3 and Table S3

Description: LefSe enrichment results; Significantly enriched microbiota in suspected Urinary Tract Infection specimens from different clinical categories.

Abundance in Group 1: increased abundance in No Growth

NCBI Quality ControlLinks
Cutibacterium acnes

Revision editor(s): MyleeeA

Signature 2

Reviewed Marked as Reviewed by Folakunmi on 2024-3-13

Curated date: 2024/03/06

Curator: MyleeeA

Revision editor(s): MyleeeA

Source: Fig 3 and Table S3

Description: LefSe enrichment results; Significantly enriched microbiota in suspected Urinary Tract Infection specimens from different clinical categories.

Abundance in Group 1: decreased abundance in No Growth

NCBI Quality ControlLinks
Subdoligranulum sp.

Revision editor(s): MyleeeA