J Bacteriol Virol.  2013 Dec;43(4):270-278. 10.4167/jbv.2013.43.4.270.

Analysis of Oropharyngeal Microbiota between the Patients with Bronchial Asthma and the Non-Asthmatic Persons

• Dang HT
• Kim SA
• Park HK
• Shin JW
• Park SG
• Kim W

• KMID: 1501995
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.4167/jbv.2013.43.4.270

Abstract

Bronchial asthma can be triggered by microbial agents in the oropharynx. This study was designed to identify the differences in microbiota of oropharynx of bronchial asthmatic patients in contrast to normal controls. In order to resolve the qualitative and quantitative diversity of the 16S rRNA gene present in the oropharynx microbiota of 4 patients and 4 controls, we compared microbial communities using Sanger sequencing and 376 sequences of 16S rRNA gene were analyzed. Of the total microbial diversity detected in the oropharynx in asthmatic patients 45.6% comprised members of the Firmicutes. In contrast, Proteobacteria (44.0%) dominated the oropharyngeal microbiota in the normal control group. Members of the Bacteroidetes, Fusobacteria, Actinobacteria, TM7, Cyanobacteria and unclassified bacteria were present in both groups. In conclusion, the difference in the microbiota of the oropharynx between patients and normal individuals could trigger symptomatic attacks in bronchial asthma.

Keyword

Bronchial asthma; Microbiota; Metagenome

MeSH Terms

Actinobacteria
Asthma*
Bacteria
Bacteroidetes
Cyanobacteria
Fusobacteria
Genes, rRNA
Humans
Metagenome
Microbiota*
Oropharynx
Proteobacteria

Figure

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  Figure 1. Comparison of the microbial diversity in the oropharynx bronchial asthma and non-asthmatic persons.

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  Figure 2. Relative abundance of the main phyla identified in bronchial asthma and non-asthmatic persons. The comparison of the proportion of each phylum among the oropharyngeal microbiota of the asthmatic versus non-asthmatic persons.

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  Figure 3. UniFrac analysis of V1-V3 16S rRNA gene sequences of the microbial community of oropharynx from in bronchial asthma and non-asthmatic persons. (A) A jackknifed clustering of the environments in the UniFrac dataset. The numbers next to the nodes represent the number of times that particular node was observed in a random sampling from the whole dataset. (B) Principal Component Analysis scatter plot of individuals from micorobiota in bronchial asthma and non-asthmatic persons (non-asthmatic persons, red; bronchial asthma, blue).

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