Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Patients with the respiratory disease "Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease" (COPD) are prone to develop periods of worsening respiratory symptoms called acute exacerbations. Acute exacerbations result in worsened quality of life and increased risk of mortality. Typically, during these periods, patients also experience increased sputum production (i.e. they cough up large amounts of saliva and mucus from their respiratory system). We collected sputum samples from 96 COPD patients who were admitted to St. Paul's Hospital or Vancouver General Hospital (Vancouver, BC, Canada) due to a COPD exacerbation. Using advanced bioinformatics tools, we determined the bacterial composition (known as the bacterial microbiome) of these samples to discover if any potential bacteria can be associated with 1-year mortality. We found an association between the number of bacterial species isolated in the sputum and the chance that the patient would still be alive 1-year after the test. The survivors (n=80) had a higher presence of bacteria related to the genus (bacterial type) Veillonella; in contrast, non-survivors (n=16) had a higher presence of the genus Staphylococcus. Our data show that measuring bacteria in sputum samples collected during a COPD exacerbation may be a way for doctors to identify those patients with a higher risk of dying after discharge.