Correlation between gastrointestinal fungi and varying degrees of chronic hepatitis B virus infection

This study aims to compare the diversity of intestinal fungal microbiota in patients with different degrees of chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. Culture-independent and culture-dependent methods were performed on 38 patients with hepatitis B cirrhosis, 35 patients with chronic hepatitis B, 33 HBV carriers, and 55 healthy volunteers. An overall fungal biodiversity of 37 different operational taxonomic units was found in the clone libraries; only Candida spp. and Saccharomyces cerevisiae were obtained by the culture-dependent analysis. There was a higher richness of fungal species in patients with hepatitis B cirrhosis than in patients with chronic hepatitis B, and the latter was higher than that in HBV carriers and healthy volunteers. There was little difference in enteric fungal diversity between HBV carriers and healthy volunteers. The results indicate that the diversity of enteric fungi was positively correlated with the disease progression of patients with different degrees of chronic HBV infection.