Song Fangying, Qi Yan, Ma Wenhui, Li Jun, Gao Yan, Ma Xiubin
State Key Laboratory Cultivation Base, Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Ophthalmology, Eye Institute of Shandong First Medical University, Qingdao, People's Republic of China.
Department of Ophthalmology, Qingdao Eye Hospital of Shandong First Medical University, Qingdao, People's Republic of China.
Diabetes Metab Syndr Obes. 2025 Jul 22;18:2451-2462. doi: 10.2147/DMSO.S527069. eCollection 2025.
Emerging evidence suggests an association between ocular microbiota dysbiosis and ophthalmic diseases; however, the role of the posterior segment microbiome in diabetic retinopathy (DR) remains poorly characterized. In this study, we characterized the vitreous microbiome of patients with proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) and systematically compared its microbial community structure with that of healthy controls.
A cohort of 19 PDR patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and 19 non-DR controls were enrolled, with vitreous samples obtained through vitrectomy. Vitreous microbial composition was characterized using 2bRAD-M sequencing technology, enabling species-level taxonomic resolution. The comparison of dominant taxa, biomarker analysis and metabolic pathway differences between the two groups were further explored.
The results of microbiome profiling revealed significant compositional differences in the vitreous core microbiome of PDR patients compared to controls, potentially associated with enhanced activity in membrane transport, nucleotide metabolism and carbohydrate metabolism pathways. LEfSe analysis identified 536 distinctive biomarkers of the two groups. At species level, the PDR group had significantly lower relative abundances of CAG-485_sp009775375, Akkermansia_muciniphila and Bacteroides_acidifaciens, compared with control group.
This is the first study confirming the microbiota in human vitreous fluid samples by 2bRAD-M sequencing. These findings suggest a potential link between vitreous microbial dysbiosis and PDR, offering novel insights for future mechanistic investigations into DR.
新出现的证据表明眼部微生物群失调与眼科疾病之间存在关联；然而，后段微生物群在糖尿病视网膜病变（DR）中的作用仍未得到充分表征。在本研究中，我们对增殖性糖尿病视网膜病变（PDR）患者的玻璃体微生物群进行了表征，并系统地将其微生物群落结构与健康对照进行了比较。
招募了一组19名2型糖尿病PDR患者和19名非DR对照，通过玻璃体切除术获取玻璃体样本。使用2bRAD-M测序技术对玻璃体微生物组成进行表征，实现物种水平的分类解析。进一步探讨了两组之间优势类群的比较、生物标志物分析和代谢途径差异。
微生物组分析结果显示，与对照组相比，PDR患者玻璃体核心微生物群的组成存在显著差异，这可能与膜转运、核苷酸代谢和碳水化合物代谢途径的活性增强有关。LEfSe分析确定了两组的536个独特生物标志物。在物种水平上，与对照组相比，PDR组中CAG-485_sp009775375、嗜黏蛋白阿克曼氏菌和嗜酸拟杆菌的相对丰度显著降低。
这是第一项通过2bRAD-M测序证实人类玻璃体液样本中微生物群的研究。这些发现表明玻璃体微生物失调与PDR之间存在潜在联系，为未来DR的机制研究提供了新的见解。
