{"doi":"10.3389/fphys.2021.699253","title":"Dynamic Changes of the Fungal Microbiome in Alcohol Use Disorder","abstract":"Background Alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD) is an important cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. The intestinal microbiota is involved in the development and progression of ALD; however, little is known about commensal fungi therein. Methods We studied the dynamic changes of the intestinal fungal microbiome, or mycobiome, in 66 patients with alcohol use disorder (AUD) and after 2 weeks of alcohol abstinence using internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) amplicon sequencing of fecal samples. Results Patients with AUD had significantly increased abundance of the genera Candida , Debaryomyces , Pichia , Kluyveromyces , and Issatchenkia , and of the species Candida albicans and Candida zeylanoides compared with control subjects. Significantly improved liver health markers caspase-cleaved and intact cytokeratin 18 (CK18-M65) levels and controlled attenuation parameter (CAP) in AUD patients after 2 weeks of alcohol abstinence were associated with significantly lower abundance of the genera Candida , Malassezia , Pichia , Kluyveromyces , Issatchenkia , and the species C. albicans and C. zeylanoides . This was mirrored by significantly higher specific anti- C. albicans immunoglobulin G (IgG) and M (IgM) serum levels in AUD patients in relation to control participants, and significantly decreased anti- C. albicans IgG levels in AUD subjects after 2 weeks of abstinence. The intestinal abundance of the genus Malassezia was significantly higher in AUD subjects with progressive liver disease compared with non-progressive liver disease. Conclusion In conclusion, improved liver health in AUD patients after alcohol abstinence was associated with lower intestinal abundances of Candida and Malassezia , and lower serum anti- C. albicans IgG levels. Intestinal fungi might serve as a therapeutic target to improve the outcome of patients in ALD.","journal":"Frontiers in Physiology","year":2021,"id":151676,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":81,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9495,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":438386,"name":"Sonja Lang","orcid":"0000-0002-7790-3377","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":644613,"name":"Su-Ling Zeng","orcid":"0000-0002-2188-4285","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":239655,"name":"Yi Duan","orcid":"0000-0002-6229-9461","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":245697,"name":"Xinlian Zhang","orcid":"0000-0002-0913-1205","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":331811,"name":"Yanhan Wang","orcid":"0000-0001-6935-0971","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":625162,"name":"Marina Bondareva","orcid":"0000-0001-7893-0580","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":620168,"name":"Andrey Kruglov","orcid":"0000-0002-4597-2087","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":245707,"name":"Derrick E. Fouts","orcid":"0000-0003-4323-7668","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":245705,"name":"Peter Stärkel","orcid":"0000-0003-2938-4442","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":239670,"name":"Bernd Schnabl","orcid":"0000-0002-6281-825X","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":625161,"name":"Phillipp Hartmann","orcid":"0000-0003-3658-3335","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":35,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:43:16.823357Z","pmid":"34349667","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}