The Lung Microbiome in Rheumatoid Arthritis and Autoimmunity

Here we report 16s rRNA data in patients with Rheumatoid Artrhitis as compared with patients with sarcoidosis and healthy volunteers. Our data shows that the BAL microbiota of RA patients was significantly less diverse and abundant when compared to healthy controls, but similar to sarcoidosis patients. This distal airways dysbiosis was attributed to the reduced presence of several genus (i.e., Actynomyces and Burkhordelia) as well as reported periodontopathic taxa, including Treponema, Prevotella and Porphyromonas. While multiple clades correlated with local and systemic levels of autoantibodies, the genus Pseudonocardia and various related OTUs were the only taxa overrepresented in RA BAL and correlated with higher disease activity and erosions. 16S rRNA was quantified and sequenced (MiSeq) from lung BAL of control, RA, and sarcoid patients. The amplicons from a total of 58 samples are barcoded and the barcodes are provided in the complete_metadata.txt file.