welcome fungus. Candida grows on the language of a mouse ( left ), but it is almost eliminated by the rival fungus secretions Pichia ( right ).
Mukherjee et al. PLoS Pathogens
When we speak of the human microbiome, bacteria generally get all the press. But fungi live in and on us, too. New research shows that a little-known fungus called Pichia lives in the mouth healthy and can play an important role in protecting us against infection by the harmful fungus Candida . The friendly fungus makes a substance that can even lead to a new antifungal drug.
Most of the time, Candida is a peaceful passenger who lives with other harmless bacteria in our mouth, but when the immune system of a person is affected, the fungus can crack, what causes a yeast infection in the mouth known as thrush name. This infection is common in people living with HIV, where it can make swallowing difficult and contribute to poor nutrition. Any difference in microbiomes mouth of people living with HIV and those without the virus could give scientists clues about how a healthy population of oral microbes can help keep Candida in check, said medical mycologist Mahmoud Ghannoum of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. "If you have a disturbance in the community, you're likely to have a disease."
So the group Ghannoum compared the microbes, both bacterial and fungal, in the mouths of 12 people living with HIV and 12 healthy controls. One hypothesis is that bacteria keep fungi in check, but the team Ghannoum found no major differences between the bacterial populations in both groups. Mushrooms, however, were another story: healthy people have more species of fungi in their mouth, and a particular fungus stand out as a possible competitor of Candida . His name is Pichia .
Mouths where many Pichia has lived tended to have lower levels of Candida Ghannoum team found. If a lack of Pichia fails to keep Candida in check in people living with HIV, which could help explain why they are more susceptible to thrush. To confirm that Pichia is killing Candida and not the reverse, the researchers studied the fungal rivalry by mixing the cultures of the two microbes in the laboratory. When the two were incubated together Pichia flourished and Candida withered.
Researchers suspected Pichia was the production of a chemical that has poisoned Candida , so they filtered fungal cells Pichia cultures. The chemical soup out remains to be a powerful antifungal, interfering with The growth of Candida and its ability to form biofilms sticky mat. When administered to mice with Candida infections, Pichia concoction -produced killed Candida their language , researchers reported online this week in PLoS Pathogens . The Pichia Treatment with the same outperformed the standard treatment for thrush, an antifungal called Nystatin.
"The other fascinating thing is that it is able to inhibit another fungus that causes the disease," said Ghannoum, including Aspergillus and Fusarium . This means that the Pichia -derived promising solution as a broad-spectrum antifungal. Ghannoum also provides a live containing mouthwash Pichia which could be used as a probiotic by HIV patients or other people at risk Candida infection.
"This is a tremendous advance in the field," says Anna-Dongari Bagtzoglou, an oral microbiologist at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington. Besides being the first study of fungal microbiome in people living with HIV, it is also the first study to compare bacterial and fungal populations in the same patients, she said. "These correlations are important because for many years we thought that the two kingdoms were competing," she said, adding that research from his laboratory showed that some bacteria can even combine with Candida to more serious infections.
Although Pichia inhibits clearly Candida in the laboratory, more work is needed to tell if a lack of Pichia is the reason HIV patients are at a higher risk for thrush. the greatest mystery in the field of microbiome is whether microbial changes are a cause or a problem of effect with the immune system, said Dongari-Bagtzoglou. "It is a chicken or the egg question."
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