META-TAXONOMIC PROFILING OF MICROBIAL CO-OCCURRENCE PATTERNS IN THE LUNGS OF TUBERCULOSIS PATIENTS

Few studies have characterized the respiratory microbiota of tuberculosis disease, with inconclusive results. Our aim was to compare the microbial ecosystem of the sputum between Tuberculosis patients and patients with moderate lung disease of asthma, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, bronchiectasis, and lung fibrosis using metagenomic profiling techniques. In particular, we assessed the common, overlapping communities of Tuberculosis patients. The Bacterial communities in the sputum of pulmonary tuberculosis patients within a cohort of patients in Saudi Arabia were identified using amplicon sequencing. Forty sputum samples were collected from patients admitted to King Fahad Armed Forces Hospital from (2019-2020). 16S rRNA V3-V4 hypervariable regions were sequenced using Illumina technology and analyzed using a pipeline of standard bioinformatics techniques to identify unique and common patterns of microbial communities. Our results demonstrated that the microbiota of the sputum of pulmonary tuberculosis patients was similar to that of the sputum of control participants at the phylum and genus levels. Additionally, we observed heterogeneity of taxa at the individual level. At the family level, the abundance of Mycobacteriaceae did not differ between anti-tuberculosis-treated and untreated cases. In contrast, the Corynebacteriaceae and Lactobacillaceae families differed significantly under the antibiotic and anti-TB regimens, respectively. This study provides insights into the microbial communities found in sputum samples from individuals with tuberculosis (TB) and the potential alterations that may occur as a result of antituberculosis treatment.