94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Systems Microbiology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1548159
The composition and function of urinary microbiota in patients with ureteral stricture
Provisionally accepted- First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China
Background: No evidences indicate that dysbiosis of the urinary microbiota is associated with ureteral stricture formation. In the present study, we aimed to firstly investigate the urinary microbiota composition and functionality of patients with ureteral stricture and compare it with those of healthy individuals.Method: We collected urine samples from 40 adult patients with ureteral stricture and 40 age-matched healthy controls. 16S rDNA sequencing were utilized to characterize the urinary microbiota and functionality associated with ureteral stricture. The functional pathways of urinary microbiota in ureteral stricture and healthy control samples were inferred using PICRUSt2.Results: A total of 80 subjects was finally included and analyzed. The alpha diversity of the urinary microbiota in ureteral stricture patients was not significantly different from that of healthy controls. However, the beta diversity of the urinary microbiota in ureteral stricture patients significantly differed from that of healthy controls (PERMANOVA, r = 0.6968, P=0.001). The principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) based on bray-curtis distance also showed evidently different clusterization between ureteral stricture and healthy control groups. Taxonomic analysis showed that the compositions of the urine microbial communities were significantly different between two groups.LEfSe identified 51 discriminative features with significant different relative abundance between ureteral stricture and healthy control groups. At the genus level, a total of 18 genus were identified between two groups. Four KEGG level 1 pathways, 18 KEGG level 2 pathways, and 89 KEGG level 3 pathways were significantly enriched between two groups. Conclusion: Our results showed significantly different urinary microbiota structure and several enriched functional pathways in ureteral stricture patients, which provide new insight into the pathogenesis of ureteral stricture.
Keywords: ureteral stricture, urine microbiota, 16s rDNA sequencing, metabolic pathway, PICRUSt2 analysis
Received: 19 Dec 2024; Accepted: 28 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chen, Leng and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Gang Chen, First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.