Institute of Respiratory Disease, Department of Medical and Occupational Sciences, University of Foggia, Foggia, Italy.
BMC Pulm Med. 2014 Feb 18;14:22. doi: 10.1186/1471-2466-14-22.
Airways of lung cancer patients are often colonized by fungi. Some of these colonizing fungi, under particular conditions, produce cancerogenic mycotoxins. Given the recent interest in the infective origin of lung cancer, with this preliminary study we aim to give our small contribution to this field of research by analysing the fungal microbiome of the exhaled breath condensate of lung cancer patients from Puglia, a region of Italy.
We enrolled 43 lung cancer patients and 21 healthy subjects that underwent exhaled breath condensate and bronchial brushing collection. The fungal incidence and nature of sample collected were analysed by using a selected media for Aspergillus species.
For the first time we were able to analyse the fungal microbioma of the exhaled breath condensate. 27.9% of lung cancer patients showed a presence of Aspergillus niger, or A. ochraceus or Penicillium ssp. while none of the healthy subjects did so.
The results confirmed the high percentage of fungal colonization of the airways of lung cancer patients from Puglia, suggesting the need to conduct further analyses in this field in order to evaluate the exact pathogenetic role of these fungi in lung cancer as well as to propose efficient, empirical therapy.
肺癌患者的气道经常被真菌定植。这些定植真菌中的一些在特定条件下会产生致癌性的真菌毒素。鉴于最近对肺癌感染起源的兴趣，我们旨在通过分析来自意大利普利亚地区肺癌患者的呼出气冷凝物中的真菌微生物组，为这一研究领域做出我们的小小贡献。
我们招募了 43 名肺癌患者和 21 名健康对照者，他们接受了呼出气冷凝物和支气管刷检采集。通过使用一种针对曲霉属物种的选择性培养基，分析了样本中真菌的发生率和性质。
我们首次能够分析呼出气冷凝物中的真菌微生物组。27.9%的肺癌患者出现了黑曲霉、或杂色曲霉或青霉属，而健康对照组均未出现。
这些结果证实了普利亚地区肺癌患者气道中真菌定植的高比例，这表明需要在这一领域进行进一步的分析，以评估这些真菌在肺癌中的确切发病作用，并提出有效的经验性治疗方法。
