A comparison of the microbiomes of lungs of cystic fibrosis and bronchiectasis patients

Objectives: Microbial lung infection plays a major role in morbidity and mortality in cystic fibrosis (CF) and bronchiectasis patients. Multiple bacterial species are often present in one sputum sample. The aim of this study is to compare the microbiota of sputum present in CF chronic lung infection and bronchiectasis patients. Methodology: In this study, sputum samples from adult CF (n=18) and bronchiectasis (n=15) patients were subject to terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (TRFLP) and bacterial tag-encoded FLX amplicon pyrosequencing (bTEFAP) analysis to identify and compare different bacterial species and abundance present. Results: TRFLP and bTEFAP gave consistent microbiome results for each sputum sample. Both TRFLP and bTEFAP showed that Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Burkholderia cepacia were the most prevalent in both CF and bronchiectasis lung. The overall microbiomes are similar between CF and bronchiectasis patient lungs with lower microbiome diversity in CF patients. Conclusion: This comparison shows some strong similarity between microbiomes of chronic CF lung infection and bronchiectasis, which may explain why many interventions that are demonstrated to be effective in CF have also been found to be effective in bronchiectasis.