Lung microbiota associations with clinical features of COPD in the SPIROMICS cohort

In this study, one of the largest bronchoscopy-based evaluations of the lung microbiome (N=181) in a multicenter COPD cohort, significant relationships between characteristics of the lung bacterial community, profiled from bronchoalveolar lavage samples, and clinical and biological features of disease were observed. These included markers of lung function impairment, symptom burden and inflammatory/immune biomarkers. In this cohort enriched in subjects with mild to moderate COPD and ever-smokers at risk for the disease, the findings suggest lung microbiota-host interactions during earlier stages of COPD that may contribute to disease pathogenesis.