Membranous nephropathy (MN), the most common causes of nephrotic syndrome in adults, is known to be associated with a disordered gut microbiota. However, the relationship between the gut mycobiome and MN remains largely unclear. This study aimed to reveal the characteristics of gut mycobiome and explore the potential discrimination ability of intestinal fungi in patients with MN. We collected 154 fecal samples from the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University. Internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequencing was used to analyze the diversity and composition of gut mycobiome. Optimum operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were obtained for constructing a model to distinguish MN patients and controls. In addition, we analyzed whether gut mycobiome profiles correlated with clinical parameters of MN using Spearman correlation analyses. Fungal diversity was decreased in patients with MN. The relative abundance of fungal species also changed significantly. The optimal 6 OTUs markers were selected through a fivefold cross-validation on a random forest model and achieved an area under the curve of 0.986 (95% CI 0.9638-1) between 34 UMN and 34 HC samples. Our results reveal the diversity and composition of the gut mycobiome are significantly altered in MN patients. Gut mycobiome analysis may serve as a tool to discriminate MN.
Zhi et al. (Fri,) studied this question.