Trial reportAnnals of the American Thoracic Society2015
Spatial Variation in the Healthy Human Lung Microbiome and the Adapted Island Model of Lung Biogeography.
Trial report in Annals of the American Thoracic Society, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to 2 registered trials, which are not on this map. Cited by 332 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Understanding the Lung Microbiome in HIV-Infected & HIV-Uninfected Individuals
Modulation of Steroid Immunosuppression by Alveolar Efferocytosis
Who cites it
332 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 547 citations in OpenAlex.
- Global research trends on the associations between the microbiota and lung cancer: a visualization bibliometric analysis (2008-2023).Frontiers in microbiology · 2024Pooled it
- The Human Respiratory Microbiome: Current Understandings and Future Directions.American journal of respiratory cell and molecular biology · 2023Pooled it
- The association between bacteria colonizing the upper respiratory tract and lower respiratory tract infection in young children: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Clinical microbiology and infection : the official publication of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases · 2021Pooled it
- Landscape of the upper and lower airway microbiota in children with community-acquired pneumonia.Virulence · 2026Article
- Myeloid cell reprogramming drives enhanced defense againstProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- The role of the respiratory microbiome in acute and chronic respiratory diseases.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Review
- Establishment of anmSystems · 2026Article
- Mitochondria Meet the Lung Microbiome: A Bidirectional Dialogue in Inflammation and Respiratory Diseases.Biomedicines · 2026Review
- Beyond Pathogens: Modulating the Commensal Microbiota to Reshape Immunity for Respiratory Disease Intervention.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Microbiota-Immune Crosstalk in Pneumonia and Acute Lung Injury: Mechanisms, Evidence, and Therapeutic Opportunities.Microorganisms · 2026Review
- Germinal center responses at barrier organ sites.Current opinion in immunology · 2026Review
- OAPGC: a high-quality oral and airway prokaryotic genome catalog for enhanced ecological resolution and disease inference.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2026Article
- Harnessing the microbiome: a new frontier in lung cancer immunotherapy.Cancer biology & medicine · 2026Review
- The Gut-Lung Microbiome Axis in Alveolar Stem Cell Regeneration and Lung Repair.Microorganisms · 2026Review
- Clinical and microbiota alterations in performance horses undergoing long-distance transport.Journal of veterinary internal medicine · 2026Article
- Integrated Analysis of the Lung Microbiome and Metabolome Reveals Associations Between Amino Acid Metabolism and Pulmonary Fibrosis in a Bleomycin-Induced Mouse Model.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- Study on the correlation between respiratory microbiome alterations and disease location/severity in children with Mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia.BMC microbiology · 2026Article
- The respiratory microbiome: dynamics from health to disease.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2026Review
- Bacterial topography of the respiratory tract, including pulmonary site-of-disease, in people with active tuberculosis: a case-control study.Research square · 2026Article
- The Role of the Respiratory Microbiome in Pneumonia.Clinics in chest medicine · 2026Review
272 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
rationaleThe lung microbiome is spatially heterogeneous in advanced airway diseases, but whether it varies spatially in health is unknown. We postulated that the primary determinant of lung microbiome constitution in health is the balance of immigration and elimination of communities from the upper respiratory tract (URT; "adapted island model of lung biogeography"), rather than differences in regional bacterial growth conditions.
objectivesTo determine if the lung microbiome is spatially varied in healthy adults.
methodsBronchoscopy was performed on 15 healthy subjects. Specimens were sequentially collected in the lingula and right middle lobe (by bronchoalveolar lavage [BAL]), then in the right upper lobe, left upper lobe, and supraglottic space (by protected-specimen brush). Bacterial 16S ribosmal RNA-encoding genes were sequenced using MiSeq (Illumina, San Diego, CA). MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN
resultsThere were no significant differences between specimens collected by BAL and protected-specimen brush. Spatially separated intrapulmonary sites, when compared with each other, did not contain consistently distinct microbiota. On average, intrasubject variation was significantly less than intersubject variation (P = 0.00003). By multiple ecologic parameters (community richness, community composition, intersubject variability, and similarity to source community), right upper lobe microbiota more closely resembled those of the URT than did microbiota from more distal sites. As predicted by the adapted island model, community richness decreased with increasing distance from the source community of the URT (P < 0.05).
conclusionsIn healthy lungs, spatial variation in microbiota within an individual is significantly less than variation across individuals. The lung microbiome in health is more influenced by microbial immigration and elimination (the adapted island model) than by the effects of local growth conditions on bacterial reproduction rates, which are more determinant in advanced lung diseases. BAL of a single lung segment is an acceptable method of sampling the healthy lung microbiome. Clinical trial registered with www.clinicaltrials.gov (NCT02392182).
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.