Oral Fungal Mycobiome in HIV exposure and Infection
Highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART) has greatly reduced opportunistic infections in HIV-infected individuals. However, even with the use of HAART, HIV-infected individuals are still at an increased risk of oral diseases, including dental caries. Dental caries development is associated with microbial community shifts leading to community dysbiosis. HIV infection can significantly alter the bacteriome and mycobiome composition in the oral cavity; however, these impacts have not been assessed for caries initiation and progression. The aim of this study was to characterize the mycobiome for supragingival plaque samples from HIV-infected (HI), HIV-exposed-but-uninfected (HEU), and HIV-unexposed-and-uninfected (HUU) children with and without caries. To accomplish this, ITS1 amplicons of 127 samples were sequenced. We found that HIV infection and exposure resulted in changes to the supragingival plaque mycobiome for both health and caries. Overall, a reduction in community diversity as caries progressed was observed, with HI children having the lowest diversity and HEU children the highest. Candida albicans was the most abundant species identified, with 177 different ASVs. Two C. albicans ASVs dominated the data (53.0% and 38.5% of all taxonomic assignments). The more frequent ASV dominated HI and HUU communities, whereas the second dominated HEU communities. HEU children also had the lowest abundance of C. albicans and the highest number of health-associated taxa.