Conjunctival microbiome changes in soft contact lens users and contact lens discomfort patients.

Abstract

Introduction: Contact lens discomfort (CLD) acts as a challenging problem, and the associated conjunctival microbiome changes were unclear.

Material and methods: Conjunctival sac swab samples were collected from 12 eyes of nonwearers (NW), 12 eyes of asymptomatic contact lens (ACL) wearers, and 11 eyes of CLD. The V3-V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene sequencing was used to investigate differences among three groups.

Results: No differences in alpha diversity were observed among the three groups. The beta diversity showed a distinct microbiome composition between ACL and CLD group (P = 0.018) with principal coordinate analysis. The relative abundance of Firmicutes was significantly higher in CLD (48.18%) than in ACL (13.21%) group (P = 0.018). The abundance of Bacillus in patients with ACL (0.05%) or with CLD (0.02%) were significantly lower than that in the NW (1.27%) group (P = 0.024, 0.028, respectively). Moreover, the abundance of Firmicutes was positively correlated with the OSDI scores in CLD patients (r = 0.817, P < 0. 01, Spearman).

Discussions: Patients with CLD have various degrees of bacterial microbiota imbalance in the conjunctival sac, compared with NW and ACL groups.

Conclusion: Firmicutes may serve as a potential biomarker for the CLD patients.