Nasal bacteria and immune changes in dogs with chronic rhinitis

Abstract

Chronic rhinitis (CR) is a frustrating clinical syndrome in dogs and our understanding of the disease pathogenesis in is limited. Increasingly, host-microbe interactions are considered key drives of clinical disease in sites of persistent mucosal inflammation such as the nasal and oral cavities. Therefore, we applied next generation sequencing tools to interrogate abnormalities present in the nose of dogs with CR and compared immune and microbiome profiles to those of healthy dogs. Host nasal cell transcriptomes were evaluated by RNA sequencing, while microbial communities were assessed by 16S rRNA sequencing. Correlation analysis was then used to identify significant interactions between nasal cell transcriptomes and the nasal microbiome and how these interactions were altered in animals with CR. Notably, we observed significant downregulation of multiple genes associated with ciliary function in dogs with CR, suggesting a previously undetected role for ciliary dysfunction in this syndrome. We also found significant upregulation of immune genes related to the TNF-α and interferon pathways. The nasal microbiome was also significantly altered in CR dogs, with overrepresentation of several potential pathobionts. Interactome analysis revealed significant correlations between bacteria in the genusand the upregulated host inflammatory responses in dogs with CR, as well as defective ciliary function which was correlated withabundance. These findings provide new insights into host-microbe interactions in a canine model of CR and indicate the presence of potentially causal relationships between nasal pathobionts and the development of nasal inflammation and ciliary dysfunction.