Microbiome diversity in the sputum of patients with pulmonary tuberculosisOriginal paper
Karen Pendergrass is a microbiome researcher specializing in microbiome-targeted interventions (MBTIs). She systematically analyzes scientific literature to identify microbial patterns, develop hypotheses, and validate interventions. As the founder of the Microbiome Signatures Database, she bridges microbiome research with clinical practice. In 2012, based on her own investigative research, she became the first documented case of FMT for Celiac Disease, four years before the first published case study.
Read MoreWhat was studied?
Researchers characterized the sputum microbiome of pulmonary tuberculosis patients in India using high-throughput 16S rRNA gene sequencing. This was the first such characterization reported for an Indian TB cohort, compared against healthy controls.
What did they find?
At the phylum level, Firmicutes and Actinobacteria were significantly more abundant in TB sputum than in controls. Neisseria and Veillonella emerged as the two dominant genera after Streptococcus, and the TB samples carried a distinct, more diverse set of core genera than prior studies had reported.
Why it matters
TB sputum harbored a diverse community of opportunistic pathogenic microbiota beyond Mycobacterium tuberculosis itself, adding to overall complexity of the sputum microbiome. The authors suggest characterizing this microbiome could offer pathogenic insights into pulmonary tuberculosis, a disease with a very high burden in India.