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Published January 5, 2010 | Published
Journal Article Open

Disordered Microbial Communities in Asthmatic Airways

Abstract

Background: A rich microbial environment in infancy protects against asthma [1], [2] and infections precipitate asthma exacerbations [3]. We compared the airway microbiota at three levels in adult patients with asthma, the related condition of COPD, and controls. We also studied bronchial lavage from asthmatic children and controls. Principal Findings: We identified 5,054 16S rRNA bacterial sequences from 43 subjects, detecting >70% of species present. The bronchial tree was not sterile, and contained a mean of 2,000 bacterial genomes per cm2 surface sampled. Pathogenic Proteobacteria, particularly Haemophilus spp., were much more frequent in bronchi of adult asthmatics or patients with COPD than controls. We found similar highly significant increases in Proteobacteria in asthmatic children. Conversely, Bacteroidetes, particularly Prevotella spp., were more frequent in controls than adult or child asthmatics or COPD patients. Significance: The results show the bronchial tree to contain a characteristic microbiota, and suggest that this microbiota is disturbed in asthmatic airways.

Additional Information

© 2010 Hilty et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Received: October 8, 2009; Accepted: December 12, 2009; Published: January 5, 2010. The study was funded by the GABRIEL FP6 Integrated Project of the European Commission and the Wellcome Trust. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. We thank Jan Henson at the National Jewish Hospital in Denver for her encouragement to pursue this study. Author Contributions: Conceived and designed the experiments: MH CB LP MFM WOCC. Performed the experiments: MH CB PC CB JCD AE LP. Analyzed the data: MH HP PC LP MFM WOCC. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: CB AB CB JCD. Wrote the paper: MH MFM WOCC. Sequences are stored as GenBank accession GQ360090-GQ365143. The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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