Association of sputum microbiome with exacerbations, patient subgroups and host response in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Association of sputum microbiome with exacerbations, patient subgroups and host response in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Little is known about the lung microbiome dynamics and host-microbiome interactions in relation to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exacerbations and in patient subgroups based on smoking status and disease severity. Here we performed a 16S ribosomal RNA survey on sputum microbiome from 16 healthy and 43 COPD subjects. For COPD subjects, a longitudinal sampling was performed from stable state to exacerbations, at two and six weeks post-exacerbations and at six months from first stable visit. Host sputum transcriptome were characterized for a subset of COPD patient samples. Overall design: We used microarrays to profile host transcriptomes at stable and exacerbtions of COPD patients.