Microbial drivers of the human pharyngeal microbiome are associated with age-related macular degeneration

While the etiology of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a major blinding disease, remains unknown, the disease is strongly associated with variants in the complement factor H (CFH) gene. CFH variants also confer susceptibility to invasive infection with Neisseria meningitidis, a bacterial colonizer of the nasopharyngeal mucosa. This shared susceptibility locus implicates complement deregulation as a common disease mechanism, and suggests the possibility that microbial interactions with host complement may trigger AMD. In this study, we address this possibility by testing the hypothesis that AMD is associated with specific microbial colonization of the human nasopharynx. Shotgun sequencing of the V3-V6 region of the microbial 16S ribosomal RNA gene was used to comprehensively and accurately describe the human pharyngeal microbiome, at genus level, in 260 AMD patients and 386 controls.