Macroscale spatial variation in chronic wound microbiota: A cross-sectional study

Controlling for sample site is considered to be an important aspect of chronic wound microbiological investigations; yet, macroscale spatial variation in wound microbiota has not been well characterized. A total of 31 curette samples were collected at the leading edge, opposing leading edge, and/or center of 13 chronic wounds. Bacterial community composition was characterized using a combination of 16S rRNA gene-based pyrosequencing; heat map display; hierarchical clustering; nonmetric multidimensional scaling; and permutation multivariate analysis of variance. A total of 58 bacterial families and 91 bacterial genera were characterized among the 13 wounds. While substantial macroscale spatial variation was observed among the wounds, bacterial communities at different sites within individual wounds were significantly more similar than those in different wounds (p=0.001). Our results support the prevalent opinion that controlling for sample site may improve the quality of wound microbiota studies; however, the significant similarity in bacterial communities from different sites within individual wounds indicates that studies failing to control for sampling site should not be disregarded based solely on this criterion. A composite sample from multiple sites across the surface of individual wounds may provide the most robust characterization of wound microbiota.