Comprehensive profiling of the vaginal microbiome in HIV positive women using massive parallel semiconductor sequencing.

Ameur A, Meiring TL, Bunikis I, Häggqvist S, Lindau C, Lindberg JH, Gustavsson I, Mbulawa ZZ, Williamson AL, Gyllensten U

Sci Rep 4 (-) 4398 [2014-03-18; online 2014-03-18]

Infections by HIV increase the risk of acquiring secondary viral and bacterial infections and methods are needed to determine the spectrum of co-infections for proper treatment. We used rolling circle amplification (RCA) and Ion Proton sequencing to investigate the vaginal microbiome of 20 HIV positive women from South Africa. A total of 46 different human papillomavirus (HPV) types were found, many of which are not detected by existing genotyping assays. Moreover, the complete genomes of two novel HPV types were determined. Abundance of HPV infections was highly correlated with real-time PCR estimates, indicating that the RCA-Proton method can be used for quantification of individual pathogens. We also identified a large number of other viral, bacterial and parasitic co-infections and the spectrum of these co-infections varied widely between individuals. Our method provides rapid detection of a broad range of pathogens and the ability to reconstruct complete genomes of novel infectious agents.

NGI Uppsala (Uppsala Genome Center)

National Genomics Infrastructure

PubMed 24637939

DOI 10.1038/srep04398

Crossref 10.1038/srep04398

pii: srep04398
pmc: PMC3957130