Respiratory tract clinical sample selection for microbiota analysis in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis

Respiratory tract microbial communities were similar in terms of the major phyla identified, yet they varied in terms of relative abundances and diversity indexes. Oropharynx communities varied with respect to health status and resembled those in sputum samples, which are collected from tuberculosis patients only due to the difficulty in obtaining sputum from healthy individuals, suggesting that oropharynx samples can be used to analyze community structure alterations associated with tuberculosis.