Prenatal complications are associated with the postnatal airway host response and microbiota in intubated preterm infants.

Purpose: To prospectively examine the relationship between prenatal events, postnatal airway host response and microbiota, and clinical outcomes.

Materials And Methods: Tracheal aspirates collected at seven days of age from 71 mechanically ventilated infants (median gestational age (GA), 25 weeks [range 23-28]) were simultaneously processed for a 12-plex protein assay and bacterial identification by 16S rRNA sequencing. Phenotypes were determined by unsupervised clustering of the protein analytes.