Screening for chronic prostatitis pathogens using high‐throughput next‐generation sequencing

Abstract

Background The pathogens responsible for chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CP/CPPS; NIH category III) are not currently known. the present study utilized high‐throughput next‐generation sequencing to screen for potential pathogens associated with NIH category III CP (CP III). Methods This study included 33 patients with CP III and 30 healthy men, from which one sample each of urethral secretions and expressed prostatic secretion (EPS) was collected. High‐throughput next‐generation sequencing was performed to detect the sequence variations and the relative abundance of the bacterial 16S ribosomal variable region and fungal internal transcribed spacer region in all samples. Bioinformatics software and databases were used for data analysis, and differences with P < .05 were considered statistically significant. Results Unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) cluster analysis, principal component analysis (PCA), and Spearman's rank correlation showed that the microbial compositions of the urethral secretions and EPS collected from the same subject were essentially the same. Conclusions No potential pathogens were identified in diagnosed patients with CP III. The EPS may be free from bacteria before and after infection. Changes in the urinary tract microbiome may disrupt the microecological balance of the urinary system, thereby leading to CP III. Conversely, the true pathogens of CP III may not be prokaryotic or eukaryotic microorganisms, Future research may involve the evaluation of noncellular microbes.

The Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratio of the human gut microbiota is associated with prostate enlargement

“…The urinary tract was previously believed to be sterile; however, recent studies using genetic methods have demonstrated that the urinary tract contains a microbiota 19 . The urinary tract microbiota is suggested to be involved in various urological diseases, such as urge urinary incontinence in women, 20 LUTS in men, 21 BPH, 22 chronic prostatitis, 23,24 and prostate cancer 22,25,26 . Because the urinary tract microbiota is related to the gut microbiota, 27 the gut microbiota may influence prostate enlargement via the urinary tract microbiota.…”

Urinary Microbiota—Are We Ready for Prime Time? A Literature Review of Study Methods’ Critical Steps in Avoiding Contamination and Minimizing Biased Results

“…Three The hypervariable region targeted by the primer was V4 solely in 17 studies [20,22,30,[32][33][34][35]38,[40][41][42][43]45,48,49,55,56]; V3 in one study [28]; V6 in two studies [31,44]; V9 in one study [27]; V3-V4 in four studies [21,37,50,54]; V1-V3 in one study [19]; V1-V2 in one study [29]; V3-V5 in one study [39]; V4-V6 in one study [36]. One study used primers targeting V2, 4, 8 and V3, 6, 7, 9 regions [24], and one study targeted V1-3 and V4-6 regions [26].…”

“…In eight studies (21%), the level of contamination comparing samples to control was discussed in the article [20,28,29,[34][35][36]44,55]. In the other articles, this issue was not discussed.…”

“…In the other articles, this issue was not discussed. Contamination was further explored in six studies (15.7%) [20,29,34,36,44,55], while the impact of contamination on the results and the possible biased results was discussed in four studies (10.5%) [29,34,44,55].…”

“…Two negative controls were used in 11 studies (885 patients-29%)[19,[29][30][31][32]34,35,42,44,53,56]. One negative control was used in two studies (73 patients-2.9%)[39,41,55]. Negative controls were not reported in 15 studies (981 patients-32.5%)[21,24,27,28,33,37,38,43,46,49,51,54].…”