Characterizing the bacterial community in sequential ( stable, exacerbation and post-exacerbation) COPD sputum samples using 454GS-FLX .. Lung microbiome in COPD

It is hypothesized that bacteria are important in the pathogenesis of COPD exacerbations and clinical expression of disease.Objective of this study was to characterize the microbial community in COPD and examine whether detectable changes occur with serial longitudinal assessment at stable (S), exacerbation (E), follow up (F) and recovery (R) visits. A total of 120 sputum sample was collected from 30 COPD patients at the four time points and bacterial DNA extracted. Patients received antibiotics and/or oral corticosteroids after clinical assessment to treat exacerbations. Follow up and recovery samples were collected 2 and 6 weeks post-exacerbation. 454GS-FLX titanium series high-throughput pyrosequencing was performed on 16SrDNA amplicon library generated from each of the 4 time point samples to examine changes in the bacterial community.