Insights into the skin microbiome dynamics of leprosy patients during multi-drug therapy and in healthy individuals from Brazil

Abstract

Leprosy is a chronic infectious peripheral neuropathy that is caused by Mycobacterium leprae, and the skin is one of its preferred target sites. However, the effects of this infection on the skin microbiome remain largely unexplored. Here, we characterize and compare the lesional and non-lesional skin microbiomes of leprosy patients and healthy individuals through the deep sequencing of 16 S rRNA genes. Additionally, a subset of patients was monitored throughout the multi-drug therapy to investigate its effect on the leprous skin microbiome. Firmicutes-associated OTUs (primarily Staphylococcus) prevailed in healthy individuals. By contrast, Firmicutes was underrepresented and Proteobacteria was enriched in the patients’ skin, although a single dominant taxon has not been observed at a finer taxonomic resolution. These differences can be explained by the significant decrease in Staphylococcus and Streptococcus as well as the enrichment in Brevundimonas. The overrepresentation of Micrococcus in patients is also remarkable. Genus-level compositional profiles revealed no significant intrapersonal difference between lesional and non-lesional sites. Treatment-associated changes indicated a loss of diversity and a shift in the community composition, with stronger impacts on the OTUs that are considered indigenous bacteria. Therefore, the molecular signatures associated with leprosy identified herein might be of importance for early diagnostics.

Investigation of skin microbiota reveals Mycobacterium ulcerans-Aspergillus sp. trans-kingdom communication

“…Comparison of skin microbiota between M. ulcerans -PCR positive and negative samples revealed a specific cutaneous microbiota associated with asymptomatic M. ulcerans skin carriage, even predicting M. ulcerans skin carriage. Other skin pathogens and diseases (leprosy and psoriasis) have been previously related to a specific skin microbiota [31-32]. The novelty in our study was to find significant, antiparallel associations between M. ulcerans and fungi: M. ulcerans was detected on the skin along with Aspergillus , in which spore germination and the fungal network were stimulated by mycolactones, whereas the detection of M. ulcerans has never been associated with the the presence of Penicillium species in the skin, Accordingly, spore germination of P. rubens was inhibited by mycolactones.…”

16S rDNA based skin microbiome data of healthy individuals and leprosy patients from India

“…A key study involving Brazilian leprosy patients provides an in-depth analysis of the composition of skin microbiome in lepromatous, skin lesions (and paired adjoining non-lesional areas) sampled from a Brazilian patient cohort 34 . Results of this study primarily indicate that both lesional as well as non-lesional skin of (treated/ untreated) individuals infected with leprosy harbors microbial communities that are significantly less diverse as compared to the skin of healthy individuals.…”

A Human Lung-Associated Streptomyces sp. TR1341 Produces Various Secondary Metabolites Responsible for Virulence, Cytotoxicity and Modulation of Immune Response

“…They were recently also mentioned in connection to the suspected communication of gut microbiota with other organs, the gut-brain and gut-lung axes (Engevik and Versalovic, 2017;Bolourian and Mojtahedi, 2018b). Next, substantial changes in their abundance correlate with certain diseases or treatments (Huang et al, 2015;Wu et al, 2017;Silva et al, 2018). And last, we should also note that human guts contain considerably lower counts of streptomycetes than we can see in other, even closely related animals (Bolourian and Mojtahedi, 2018a).…”