Early_copd

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) affects over 3 million people in the UK. A major driver of disease progression is bacterial infection, and people with advanced COPD have a high microbial burden in their lungs with significant levels of community level dysbiosis. However, the role of the lung microbiome in the early stages of the disease is unknown. Upper and lower respiratory tract samples have been collected via bronchoscopy from 50 individuals including healthy volunteers and those with early signs of COPD. We will carry out deep metagenomic sequencing on these samples to gain a high resolution of the lung microbiome and combine this with detailed clinical and phenotypic metadata collected for these patients. We will aim to identify bacterial signals of early lung disease.