Metagenomic profiling of ocular surface microbiome alterations in patients with progressive supranuclear palsy-Richardson’s syndrome

Abstract

This study employed shotgun metagenomic sequencing to characterize the ocular surface microbiome in 20 progressive supranuclear palsy-Richardson’s syndrome (PSP-RS) patients, 17 Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients, and 30 healthy controls (HC). Comparative analysis revealed that PSP-RS patients exhibited significantly altered microbial β-diversity compared to HC, while PD patients showed no such significant changes. Both patient groups demonstrated decreased abundance of g_Vibrio, with PSP-RS patients additionally showing marked increases in g_Acinetobacter and g_Anaerococcus. Importantly, correlation analyses identified that increased g_Acinetobacter abundance was positively associated with ocular motor impairment severity, while elevated g_Anaerococcus levels correlated with both freezing of gait severity and longer disease duration in PSP-RS patients. This is the first shotgun metagenomic investigation of the ocular surface microbiome in PSP-RS and these findings provide evidence that specific alterations in the ocular surface microbiome may contribute to PSP-RS pathogenesis and disease progression.