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. We used microarrays to profile host transcriptomes at stable and exacerbtions of COPD patients.