New microbiota found in sputum from patients with community-acquired pneumonia.

Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a major concernin hospitals and the bacterial community of which has notbeen systemically discussed yet. Sputum from patients in theacute stages is a kind of accessible sample reflecting its fea-tures. In our study, we analyzed 45 sputum samples from 45patients with CAP. Eighteen sputum samples from healthypeople were chosen as the controls. Pyrosequencing of the16s rDNAV3 hypervariable regions of all the bacteria con-tained in the sputum was used as a culture-independentmethod to disclose the community constitution. Also, ourpublished data for hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) insputum was used for comparison. By pyrosequencing,>90,000 DNA reads were detected. After being analyzed bytoolsintheRibosomalDatabaseProject,thereadswereclas-sified into five main phyla and >100 genera. At the phylalevel, the reads’ distribution of CAP is similar to that ofhealthy people and at genera level, the occurrence of eachgenus possesses their feature in three categories. Generasuch as Streptococcus and Neisseria showed stability in theirpercentages, indicating that such genera are rarely affected byexogenous bacteria or antibiotics. The role of other generasuch as Moraxella and Rothia in CAP should be emphasized.According to our analysis, the bacterial communities of CAPare with slight change when compared with those of healthypeople, but have a large gap between HAP. Meanwhile, Rothiamight bean important endogenous pneumonia-causingfactor.