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Evaluating the Health Risks of Pneumonia from Airborne Bacterial Communities Using 16S rDNA Sequences of

Jian Guo Guo¹, Qi Kong¹, Ce Liu²

¹NHC Key Laboratory of Human Disease Comparative Medicine, Institute of Laboratory Animal Sciences, CAMS & PUMC, Beijing 100021, China;Key Laboratory of Human Diseases Animal Model, State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Beijing 100021, China.

Biomedical and Environmental Sciences : BES

|April 25, 2021

Abstract

Objective:

Airborne microbial communities include a significant number of uncultured and poorly characterized bacteria. No effective method currently exists to evaluate the health risks of such complex bacterial populations, particularly for pneumonia.

Methods:

We developed a method to evaluate risks from airborne microorganisms, guided by the principle that closer evolutionary relationships reflect similar biological characteristics, and thus used 16S rDNA sequences of 10 common pneumonia-related bacterial pathogens. We calculated a risk of breath-related ( Rbr) index of airborne bacterial communities and verified effectiveness with artificial flora and a clinical project.

Results:

We suggested applying Rbr80 to evaluate the health risks of airborne bacterial communities that comprise 80% of dominant operational taxonomic units (OTUs). The feasibility of Rbr80 was confirmed by artificial flora and by pneumonia data from a hospital. A high Rbr80 value indicated a high risk of pneumonia from airborne bacterial communities.

Conclusion:

Rbr80 is an effective index to evaluate the pneumonia-associated risk from airborne bacteria. Values of Rbr80 greater than 15.40 are considered high risk.

Keywords:

Airborne bacteria Health risk Pneumonia The risk of breath related index (Rbr)

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