Bacterial Contamination of Blood DNA Samples is Associated with Donor's Health Condition

Bacterial contamination often occurs in human blood DNA samples, possibly due to bacteremia or an inappropriate procedure during sample preparation. This study aimed at analyzing the clinical significance of bacterial DNA contamination in human blood DNA samples and to assess its influence on experimental data. DNA samples (N = 1359) were randomly selected from population-based cohort samples to determine bacterial DNA contamination by polymerase chain reaction and direct DNA sequencing. Bacterial DNA contaminated samples (N = 150) were then assessed for experimental quality of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) chip data, compared with uncontaminated DNA samples (N = 1209). DNA sequencing data showed that a major source of bacterial contaminants was derived from Alcaligenes species. The occurrence of bacterial DNA contaminations was significantly associated with some clinical variables including a postprandial glucose level at 60 min, % body fat, and waist-to-hip ratio. It was also found that there was no difference of SNP call rates between bacterial DNA contaminated samples and uncontaminated DNA samples. This study showed that bacterial DNA contamination in human blood samples was related to donor's health condition, suggesting that the occurrence of bacterial DNA contamination may provide useful health information of blood donors and a potential tool for human disease genomics.