Tracheal aspirate metagenomics reveals association of antibiotic resistance with non-pulmonary sepsis mortality

Abstract

Background Previous metabarcoding studies based on 16S rRNA sequencing in patients with extrapulmonary sepsis have found early pulmonary dysbiosis associated with a poor prognosis. To further discern this association, here we aimed to better characterize the pulmonary bacterial communities in these patients by leveraging metagenomics and to evaluate if the presence of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) could explain the higher mortality of the patients.