Environmental Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Augsburg, 86156 Augsburg, Germany.
Institute of Environmental Medicine, Helmholtz Zentrum München, 86156 Augsburg, Germany.
Biomolecules. 2023 Jun 23;13(7):1030. doi: 10.3390/biom13071030.
Atopic dermatitis (AD) is an inflammatory skin disease with a microbiome dysbiosis towards a high relative abundance of . However, information is missing on the actual bacterial load on AD skin, which may affect the cell number driven release of pathogenic factors. Here, we combined the relative abundance results obtained by next-generation sequencing (NGS, 16S V1-V3) with bacterial quantification by targeted qPCR (total bacterial load = 16S, = nuc gene). Skin swabs were sampled cross-sectionally ( = 135 AD patients; = 20 healthy) and longitudinally ( = 6 AD patients; = 6 healthy). NGS and qPCR yielded highly inter-correlated relative abundances and cell numbers. Additionally, intra-individual differences between body sides, skin status, and consecutive timepoints were also observed. Interestingly, a significantly higher total bacterial load, in addition to higher relative abundance and cell numbers, was observed in AD patients in both lesional and non-lesional skin, as compared to healthy controls. Moreover, in the lesional skin of AD patients, higher cell numbers significantly correlated with the higher total bacterial load. Furthermore, significantly more severe AD patients presented with higher cell number and total bacterial load compared to patients with mild or moderate AD. Our results indicate that severe AD patients exhibit driven increased bacterial skin colonization. Overall, bacterial quantification gives important insights in addition to microbiome composition by sequencing.
特应性皮炎（AD）是一种炎症性皮肤病，其微生物组失调，相对丰度较高。然而，AD 皮肤的实际细菌负荷信息尚不清楚，这可能会影响细胞数量驱动的致病因子释放。在这里，我们将下一代测序（NGS，16S V1-V3）获得的相对丰度结果与靶向 qPCR 进行的细菌定量相结合（总细菌负荷= 16S，= nuc 基因）。皮肤拭子进行了横断面（= 135 例 AD 患者；= 20 例健康对照）和纵向（= 6 例 AD 患者；= 6 例健康对照）采样。NGS 和 qPCR 产生了高度相关的相对丰度和细胞数量。此外，还观察到个体内身体两侧、皮肤状况和连续时间点之间的差异。有趣的是，与健康对照组相比，AD 患者的皮损和非皮损皮肤均观察到总细菌负荷显著升高，此外，还观察到更高的相对丰度和细胞数量。此外，在 AD 患者的皮损皮肤中，更高的细胞数量与更高的总细菌负荷显著相关。此外，与轻度或中度 AD 患者相比，病情更严重的 AD 患者的细胞数量和总细菌负荷更高。我们的结果表明，严重 AD 患者表现出细胞驱动的细菌皮肤定植增加。总的来说，细菌定量除了通过测序了解微生物组组成外，还提供了重要的见解。
