S. Tadayon1, A. Hanshew1, S. Thibeault1 1University Of Wisconsin,Madison, WI, USA
Introduction:
The microbiota is comprised of bacteria, fungi, and archaea that reside on epithelial surfaces throughout the body. Shifts in normal microbial communities have now been linked to disease in numerous body sites. We sought to compare two sampling methods for microbiota study in healthy vocal folds, including swabbing and biopsies. Biopsy of true vocal folds is problematic because it can lead to scarring and dysphonia and therefore cannot ethically be used to evaluate healthy vocal folds in humans. Swabbing has been used to assess microbial communities in other areas of the body because it is less invasive and does not disrupt the normal epithelium. If swabbing of vocal folds reveals similar microbial communities to samples taken by biopsy, swabbing could be used as an alternative to biopsy. Additionally, the microbial communities of false vocal folds could be used in clinical practice as proxies for true vocal folds in research, but the similarity between these two niches is unknown. The false and true vocal folds differ in epithelial type and in function.
Methods:
Due to their use as an animal model in vocal fold research, we used 6 pigs in our comparison of the microbial communities in vocal folds. True and false vocal fold mucosal samples were collected using sterile Catch-All swabs and biopsy. Total DNA was extracted and the V3-V5 region of the 16S rRNA gene was amplified. The resulting amplicons were sequenced using 454 pyrosequencing.
Results:
Preliminary analysis of data from three pigs suggest that microbial communities are unique in relative composition for each pig, though all three communities were dominated by bacteria in the phyla Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, Fusobacteria and Proteobacteria. The microbial communities found by swabbing were similar to those found by biopsy. We did not find a relationship between the microbiota of true and false vocal folds in the preliminary data from the first three pigs.
Conclusion:
The microbiota of swabbed and biopsied samples were similar suggesting that swabbing could be used as a reliable alternative to biopsy. Swabbing will allow for greater assessment of microbial communities in healthy individuals since it is much less traumatic to the epithelium and does not cause scarring.