Airway microecology in rifampicin-resistant and rifampicin-sensitive pulmonary tuberculosis patients.

BACKGROUND: Pulmonary tuberculosis is a chronic infectious disease of the respiratory system. It is still one of the leading causes of death from a single infectious disease, but it has been stuck in the study of a single pathogen. Recent studies have shown that many diseases are associated with disruption of the native microbiota. In this study we investigated the occurrence of tuberculosis and the correlation between drug resistance and respiratory flora. High-throughput 16 S rRNA gene sequencing was used to characterize the respiratory microbiota composition of 30 tuberculosis (TB) affected patients and compared with 30 healthy (H) controls. According to their Gene Xpert results, 30 pulmonary tuberculosis patients were divided into 12 persons in the drug-sensitive group (DS0) and 18 persons in the drug-resistant group (DR0). The microbial flora of the two were compared with the H group. RESULTS: The data generated by sequencing showed that Firmicutes, Proteus, Bacteroides, Actinomyces and Fusobacterium were the five main bacterial phyla detected, and they constituted more than 96% of the microbial community. The relative abundances of Fusobacterium, Haemophilus, Porphyromonas, Neisseria, TM7, Spirochetes, SR1, and Tenericutes in the TB group was lower than that of the H group, and Granulicatella was higher than the H group. The PcoA diagrams of the two groups had obvious clustering differences. The Alpha diversity of the TB group was lower than that of the H group, and the Beta diversity was higher than that of the H group (P < 0.05). The relative abundance of Streptococcus in the DS0 group was significantly higher than that in the DR0 group (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Pulmonary tuberculosis can cause disorders of the respiratory tract microbial flora, in which the relative abundance of Streptococcus was significantly different between rifampicin-sensitive and rifampicin-resistant patients.

[Cellular immunity characteristics in drug abusers with pulmonary tuberculosis].

OBJECTIVE: To explore the characteristics of cellular immunity in drug abusers with pulmonary tuberculosis. METHODS: Sixty drug abusers with pulmonary tuberculosis and 60 non-drug abusers with pulmonary tuberculosis (control) were enrolled in this study. Three days after establishment of a definite diagnosis, peripheral blood was taken from the patients for lymphocyte subgroup (CD3(+), CD3(+)/CD4(+), CD3(+)/CD8(+) T lymphocyte subgroups and NK cells) examination by flow cytometry, and the CD4(+)/CD8+(+) ratio was calculated. The difference of cellular immunity between the drug abusers and control group was analyzed statistically. RESULTS: CD3(+) and CD3(+)/CD4(+) T lymphocytes subgroups and NK cells of the drug abusers were significantly lower than those of the control patients (P=0.037, 0.028 and 0.015), and the former patients had also significantly lower CD4(+)/CD8(+) ratio (P=0.021). The pulmonary tuberculosis types and CD3(+)/CD8(+) T lymphocyte subgroup were not significant different between the two groups (P=0.053 and 0.85). CONCLUSION: Drug abuse might depress cellular immunity in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis, which further complicate the treatment of this disease.