Abstract / Summary
Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are the most prevalent bacterial infections globally, and their management increasingly challenged by antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Probiotics offer a promising approach to mitigate AMR by competitively excluding uropathogens and enhancing host immunity by producing immune modulators. Despite their therapeutic potential, key gaps persist between the discovery of uroprotective probiotic strains and optimization of formulations for urinary tract delivery. Here, we analyzed the urinary microbiome of UTI patients and healthy individuals to identify potential probiotic candidates for the prevention and management of UTIs. Publicly available 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing data of the urinary tract were processed using a standardized pipeline for sequence quality assessment, taxonomic assignment, and microbial function prediction. Comparative analysis showed a significant difference in microbial composition between UTI patients and healthy controls. The dominated phyla included Acidobacteriota, Actinomycetota, Bacteroidota, Campylobacterota, Cyanobacteria, Bacillota, Fusobacteriota, Patescibacteria, Proteobacteria, and Synergistota. Overall differential abundance analysis revealed Escherichia coli as the predominant UTI-associated species, while Lactobacillus crispatus was enriched in healthy samples. Additionally, the plant-associated taxa including Bradyrhizobium diazoefficiens, and Methylobacterium spp has been identified differentially abundant in healthy control, whereas Rhodanobacter glycinis identified differentially abundant in UTI condition. Furthermore, predictive functional analysis indicated that metabolic pathways associated with beneficial microbes were enriched in the healthy group. Overall, the association of distinct urinary microbiome signatures with infection status, supports the consistent association of L. crispatus with healthy urinary microbiomes and represents a candidate for future probiotic evaluation. Also, there is a need of investigation of plant-associated bacterial taxa detected in urinary microbiome are required.