Screening for chronic prostatitis pathogens using high-throughput next-generation sequencing

Abstract

Background: The pathogens responsible for chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CP/CPPS; NIH category III) are not currently known. the present study utilized high-throughput next-generation sequencing to screen for potential pathogens associated with NIH category III CP (CP III). Methods: This study included 33 patients with CP III and 30 healthy men, from which one sample each of urethral secretions and expressed prostatic secretion (EPS) was collected. High-throughput next-generation sequencing was performed to detect the sequence variations and the relative abundance of the bacterial 16S ribosomal variable region and fungal internal transcribed spacer region in all samples. Bioinformatics software and databases were used for data analysis, and differences with P