Molecular Identification of Bacterial DNA in the Chorioretinal Scars of Chronic Granulomatous Disease

Purpose

Chronic granulomatous disease (CGD) is an inherited disorder characterized by defects in phagocyte-derived nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate oxidase. It is typically diagnosed in childhood and leads to severe, recurrent bacterial or fungal infections. Chorioretinal lesions are the most common ocular manifestation. We sought to determine whether there are infectious agents in CGD-associated chorioretinopathy.

Methods

Medical records and ocular histopathology from CGD cases from January 1983 to January 2012 at the National Institutes of Health were retrospectively reviewed. Chorioretinal cells from normal and lesional tissues of the same eye were microdissected. Primers for Staphylococcus epidermidis, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Burkholderia sp., and a panbacterial 16S ribosomal DNA were used for polymerase chain reaction.

Results

Seventeen CGD patients had ocular tissues (16 autopsied cases and 1 chorioretinal biopsy) examined. Of these 17, 8 demonstrated CGD-associated chorioretinal lesions in at least one eye on histopathology. Of these 8, 7 showed amplification of 16S ribosomal DNA within the lesion; of these 7, two also amplified S. epidermidis and one P. aeruginosa. One had no bacterial DNA amplified. Importantly, no microbial DNA was amplified from the normal, non-lesional ocular tissues of these 8 cases. Furthermore, only 1 of the 9 eyes without chorioretinopathy had amplified Burkholderia DNA, that patient had a history of Burkholderia infection.

Conclusions

We detected bacterial DNA in 7 of 8 (88 %) cases with CGD-associated chorioretinopathy and only in 1 normal ocular tissue of 17 CGD cases. Bacterial infection may play a role in the pathogenesis of CGD-associated chorioretinal lesions.