Department of Engineering Design and Mathematics, University of the West of England Bristol, UK.
Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2013 Aug 15;3:41. doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2013.00041. eCollection 2013.
The urinary microbiome of healthy individuals and the way it alters with ageing have not been characterized and may influence disease processes. Conventional microbiological methods have limited scope to capture the full spectrum of urinary bacterial species. We studied the urinary microbiota from a population of healthy individuals, ranging from 26 to 90 years of age, by amplification of the 16S rRNA gene, with resulting amplicons analyzed by 454 pyrosequencing. Mid-stream urine (MSU) was collected by the "clean-catch" method. Quantitative PCR of 16S rRNA genes in urine samples, allowed relative enumeration of the bacterial loads. Analysis of the samples indicates that females had a more heterogeneous mix of bacterial genera compared to the male samples and generally had representative members of the phyla Actinobacteria and Bacteroidetes. Analysis of the data leads us to conclude that a "core" urinary microbiome could potentially exist, when samples are grouped by age with fluctuation in abundance between age groups. The study also revealed age-specific genera Jonquetella, Parvimonas, Proteiniphilum, and Saccharofermentans. In conclusion, conventional microbiological methods are inadequate to fully identify around two-thirds of the bacteria identified in this study. Whilst this proof-of-principle study has limitations due to the sample size, the discoveries evident in this sample data are strongly suggestive that a larger study on the urinary microbiome should be encouraged and that the identification of specific genera at particular ages may be relevant to pathogenesis of clinical conditions.
健康个体的尿微生物组及其随年龄变化的方式尚未得到描述，可能会影响疾病过程。传统的微生物学方法在捕捉尿液细菌物种的全谱方面具有有限的范围。我们通过扩增 16S rRNA 基因，对来自年龄在 26 至 90 岁的健康个体的尿微生物群进行了研究，并用 454 焦磷酸测序对扩增子进行了分析。采用“清洁捕捉”法收集中段尿（MSU）。对尿液样本中 16S rRNA 基因的定量 PCR 允许相对计数细菌负荷。对样本的分析表明，与男性样本相比，女性的细菌属混合更为多样化，通常具有放线菌门和拟杆菌门的代表性成员。数据分析使我们得出结论，当按年龄对样本进行分组时，可能存在一个“核心”尿微生物组，其丰度在年龄组之间波动。该研究还揭示了特定年龄的属乔昆塔氏菌、小单胞菌、蛋白菌和发酵糖菌。总之，传统的微生物学方法不足以充分识别本研究中鉴定出的约三分之二的细菌。虽然由于样本量的限制，这项初步研究具有局限性，但从这些样本数据中得出的发现强烈表明，应该鼓励对尿微生物组进行更大规模的研究，并且在特定年龄识别特定属可能与临床状况的发病机制相关。
