Alterations in lung and gut microbiota reduce diversity in patients with nontuberculous mycobacterial pulmonary disease

Abstract

Background/Aims Although the incidence of nontuberculous mycobacteria pulmonary disease (NTM-PD), a chronic infectious disease, is increasing, lung and gut microbiota dysbiosis in NTM patients has rarely been studied and was therefore the focus of this study. Methods We analyzed the microbiota diversity in sputum and stool samples from 10 healthy subjects and 10 patients with NTM-PD through sequencing of the V3 and V4 regions of the 16S rRNA gene. In NTM-PD patients, we comparatively evaluated the microbiota diversity according to the body mass index (BMI), with BMI ≤ 18.5 kg/m2 defined as “underweight” and BMI > 18.5 kg/m2 as “others.” Results The sputum microbiota from NTM-PD patients tended to have lower index values of amplicon sequence variant richness, Shannon evenness, and beta diversity than those from the control group. Furthermore, NTM-PD patients with a low BMI had a lower microbiota diversity than patients with high BMI. Fecal samples from NTM-PD patients also significantly differed in alpha and beta diversity compared with the control group and exhibited a diversity pattern similar to that found in sputum samples. Conclusions Our results reveal that the lung and gut microbiota of patients with NTM-PD exhibit an altered distribution and reduced richness and diversity.

Keywords

• nontuberculous mycobacteria
• microbiota
• lungs
• gastrointestinal microbiome