Anaerobic flora of the conjunctival sac in patients with AIDS and with anophthalmia compared with normal eyes

Abstract

Relatively few investigations of anaerobic bacteria as ocular flora have been conducted, and their results have been contradictory. The conjunctival sacs of 22 normal subjects and of 14 patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, and 22 anophthalmic sockets were cultured for anaerobic bacteria Thirty-four (77.3%) of the 44 eyes of normal subjects harbored anaerobic bacteria; Propionibacterium acnes was present in 28 eyes (63.6%), Lactobacillus species in 6 eyes (13.6%), and Veillonella species in 7 eyes (15.9%). The finding were very similar for anophthalmic sockets (p = 0.01), with 17 (77.3%) of the 22 sockets harboring anaerobes; Propionibacterium acnes was the organism identified in 16 (72.7%) of these sockets; Veillonella was identified in 4 (18.1%), Peptococcus niger in 3 (13.6%) and P. granulosum in 2 (9.0%) of these sockets. Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome patients had the highest incidence of anaerobic organisms, with positive cultures obtained from 24 (85.7%) of the 28 eyes. Propionibacterium species were isolated from 16 (57.1%) of these eyes. Clostridium species from 10 (35.7%) eyes and Actinomyces species from 8 (28.6%) eyes. It thus appears that anaerobic organisms are common flora in normal conjunctival sacs and in anophthalmic sockets, as well as in the sacs of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome patients, but the latter group had a higher incidence (x2 = 0.87) and a spectrum of organisms that was different from that of the other two groups.

Impact of Microbiome on Ocular Health

“…These include P. aeruginosa , Enterobacter sp , E. coli, Proteus sp , and Acinetobacter sp. 9–14 The data are mostly based on experiments where moistened ocular cotton swabs were used to sample the ocular tissues and aliquots were allowed to grow on selective agar-based media. What is striking across these studies is the huge variability in the number of samples showing positive bacterial growth, ranging from 16% to 89% (for CNS sp ), for it also reveals that a significant number of the ocular swabs contain non-expanding in vitro microbial growth.…”

Impact of Microbiota on Resistance to Ocular Pseudomonas aeruginosa-Induced Keratitis

“…While the Gram-positive species above are sparingly detected in ocular environment, the Gram-negative species are even less frequently detected and include Pseudomonas aeruginosa , Enterobacter sp., Escherichia coli , Proteus sp., and Acinetobacter sp. [ 12 , 15 – 19 ]. Numerically, the conjunctival surfaces harbor 10–100 CFU/swab in 20–80% of the swabs, a figure remarkably different from the number of commensals present in the oral mucosa where 100% of the swabs yield 10 7 −10 8 CFU/ml of cultivatable bacterial species [ 20 , 21 ].…”

Evaluation of ocular prosthesis biofilm and anophthalmic cavity contamination after use of three cleansing solutions

“…Portellinha, et al 13 (1984) correlated the presence of secretion with the time of use and the frequency of prosthesis cleansing and found that the bacterial colonization in the AC and the frequency of OP cleansing had no statistically significant correlation. Campos 2 (1994) did not find a positive correlation between the time of use of OP and the presence of microorganisms.…”