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Microbiome diversity in the sputum of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis

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Abstract

TB is a worldwide pandemic. India has the highest burden of TB, with WHO statistics for 2013 giving an estimated incidence figure of 2.1 million cases for India out of a global incidence of 9 million. Microbiota have been shown to be associated with many disease conditions; however, only few studies have been reported for microbiota associated with TB infection. For the first time, we characterized the composition of microbiota of TB patients of India, using high-throughput 16S rRNA gene sequencing and compared it with healthy controls. Phylum-level analysis showed that the relative abundance of Firmicutes and Actinobacteria was significantly higher in TB samples and Neisseria and Veillonella were two dominant genera after Streptococcus. In our study, significantly different core genera in TB and normal population were found as compared with the reported studies. Also, the presence of diverse opportunistic pathogenic microbiota in TB patients increases the complexity and diversity of sputum microbiota. Characterization of the sputum microbiome is likely to provide important pathogenic insights into pulmonary tuberculosis.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Grand Challenges Canada (ID S4 0253-01) for providing financial assistance to support this study, to Dr. Anish Zacharia J, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Limited, India for collection of samples from Gajra Raja Medical College, Gwalior, India, and to Devashish Ohri, Executive Vice President-APAC and Shyam Sharma, Vice President-Diagnostics APAC, Avantor Performance Materials India Limited for their support and providing infrastructure. Bioinformatics support was provided by 1st BASE Laboratories, Singapore.

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Diagnostics R&D, Avantor Performance Materials India Limited (formerly RFCL Limited), New Delhi, 110020, India

      P. Krishna & A. Jain

    2. School of Studies in Biotechnology, Jiwaji University, Gwalior, 474011 M.P., India

      P. S. Bisen

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    1. P. Krishna
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    2. A. Jain
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    3. P. S. Bisen
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    Correspondence to P. S. Bisen.

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    Funding

    Grand Challenges Canada, Grant ID S4 0253-01.

    Conflict of interest

    The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

    Ethical approval

    All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

    Informed consent

    Written consent was obtained from all the studied patients for sample collection and subsequent analysis.

    Additional information

    Pankaj Krishna and Anubhav Jain contributed equally as first author.

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    Krishna, P., Jain, A. & Bisen, P.S. Microbiome diversity in the sputum of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis. Eur J Clin Microbiol Infect Dis 35, 1205–1210 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10096-016-2654-4

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10096-016-2654-4

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