The dynamic change of bacterial community in patients with COPD and community-acquired pneumonia in an intensive care unit in Taiwan

This prospective, longitudinal, observational study was conducted at the respiratory intensive care unit of Taichung Veterans General Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan. Subjects who had been previously diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, were admitted to the respiratory intensive care unit , and presented with community-acquired pneumonia that required endotracheal intubation and invasive mechanical ventilation were enrolled in this study. Genomic deoxyribonucleic acid was extracted from both endotracheal aspirate and saline samples using a taco™ DNA/RNA Extraction Kit (GeneReach Biotechnology, Taiwan) and individually collected and stored at –80°C for further determinations. The V3-V4 hypervariable region of the 16S rRNA gene was amplified using the Illumina composite primers. The amplicons were then subjected to sequencing (Genomics, Taiwan) for further analysis.