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Updated: Aug 6, 2026
Conjunctival Commensal Isolation and Identification in Mice
Published on: May 1, 2021
Acute and long-term effects of ocular surface burns on ocular surface microbiota: a one-year follow-up study
Zijing Lu1,2,3, Shouyue Xia3, Na Zhang4
1The Affiliated Eye Hospital of Suzhou Vocational Health College, Suzhou, China.
Background:
Ocular surface burns (OSBs) are severe injuries that disrupt the ocular surface microenvironment. While the role of microbiota in ocular surface homeostasis is increasingly recognized, the acute and long-term impacts of OSB on this microbial community remain poorly understood.
Methods:
This longitudinal study collected conjunctival swabs from the inferior fornix of three groups: healthy controls (HOS, N = 11), patients with acute OSB (N = 11), and the same patients one-year post-burn (OSB_1Y, N = 7). Microbiota composition was analyzed using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Ocular surface parameters and patient-reported outcomes were also assessed.
Results:
Exploratory observations suggest trends toward altered ocular surface microbiota in OSB patients that may persist for at least one year. Alpha diversity was lower in OSB and OSB_1Y compared with HOS. At the genus level, Parabacteroides and Lachnoclostridium showed trends toward enrichment in OSB and OSB_1Y. Possible associations were observed in correlation analyses: in OSB_1Y, Corynebacterium abundance tended to be negatively associated with tear meniscus height, while Bacteroidota tended to be positively associated with meibomian gland dropout scores. Lower microbial relative abundances were observed with worse visual acuity and more severe burn grade. Predictive functional analyses suggested trends toward upregulation of type III secretion system-related proteins in the acute phase and tight junction-associated proteins in the long-term phase.
Conclusion:
OSB may be associated with acute and long-lasting changes in the ocular surface microbiota. Given the low-biomass nature of the ocular surface, the absence of formal contamination controls, the use of a stool-optimized DNA extraction kit, and the lack of multiple testing correction, these findings should be interpreted with extreme caution. These preliminary microbial observations appear nominally associated with some clinical parameters, which may provide exploratory clues for post-burn ocular surface changes, but no definitive pathophysiological relevance can be established.
