Effect of glucose on growth and co-culture of and in artificial sputum medium.

People with cystic fibrosis-related diabetes (CFRD) suffer from chronic infections with and/or In people with CFRD, the concentration of glucose in the airway surface liquid (ASL) was shown to be elevated from 0.4 to 4 mM. The effect of glucose on bacterial growth/interactions in ASL is not well understood and here we studied the relationship between these lung pathogens in artificial sputum medium (ASM), an environment similar to ASL exhibited more rapid adaptation to growth in ASM than . Supplementation of ASM with glucose significantly increased the growth of (p < 0.01, n = 5) and (p < 0.001, n = 3). ASM conditioned by the presence of promoted growth of with less lag time compared with non-conditioned ASM, or conditioned medium that had been heated to 121 °C. Stable co-culture of and could be established in a 50:50 mix of ASM and -conditioned supernatant. These data indicate that glucose, in a nutrient depleted environment, can promote the growth of and In addition, heat labile factors present in pre-conditioned ASM promoted the growth of . We suggest that the use of ASM allows investigation of the effects of nutrients such as glucose on common lung pathogens. ASM could be further used to understand the relationship between and in a co-culture scenario. Our model of stable co-culture could be extrapolated to include other common lung pathogens and could be used to better understand disease progression