Microbial communities in the respiratory tract of patients with interstitial lung disease.

Background: Molecular methods based on phylogenetic differences in the 16S rRNA gene are able to characterise the microbiota of the respiratory tract in health and disease.

Objectives: Our goals were (1) to characterise bacterial communities in lower and upper airways of patients with interstitial lung disease (ILD) and (2) to compare the results with the microbiota of patients with Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) and normal controls.

Methods: We examined the upper and lower respiratory tract of 18 patients with ILD of whom 5, 6, and 7 had idiopathic interstitial pneumonia (IIP), non-IIP and sarcoidosis, respectively.

Staphylococcus aureus in patients with rheumatoid arthritis under conventional and anti-tumor necrosis factor-alpha treatment.

Objective: To compare the prevalence of nasal and oral Staphylococcus aureus in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) with the prevalence in controls with other rheumatic diseases, and to determine predictors of S. aureus carriage and the influence of treatment with anti-tumor necrosis factor-a (anti-TNF-alpha) agents.

Methods: Eighty-one patients with RA and 83 other control patients of 2 outpatient rheumatology clinics were cultured for nasal and oral carriage of S.