ArticleRespiratory research2025
Sputum quality affects assessment of airway microbiology in childhood asthma.
Article in Respiratory research, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- The effect ofiScience · 2026Article
- Multidrug-resistantERJ open research · 2026Article
- The impact of sputum sample quality on sputum culture results: a retrospective analysis of clinical microbiology sputum culture data spanning 10 years.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- The lung microbiome and asthma: from inflammatory phenotype differentiation to microbe-based immunomodulatory strategies.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Review
- Genomic and clinical insights into multidrug-resistantFrontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- NLRP3 inflammasome expression in pediatric asthma: sputum-based insights, inflammatory mechanisms, and targeted therapeutic strategies.Allergy, asthma, and clinical immunology : official journal of the Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology · 2025Review
- Sputum sample quality selection in microbiota research; a chance to improve methods??Respiratory research · 2025Article
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8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThe analysis of sputum is the principal basis for characterising lower airway microbiology in those with chronic respiratory conditions. For such analysis to be informative, samples that poorly reflect the lower airways must be identified and removed. Our cross-sectional study explored the relationship between the quality of sputum samples and their microbiological content. We further investigated the impact of excluding low quality samples on observed microbiota-disease relationships in childhood asthma.
methodsInduced sputum was collected from children with or without asthma. Sputum quality was assessed according to squamous cell%, cell viability%, detection of sputum plugs, and salivary α-amylase levels. Sputum microbiota was characterised by 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing and qPCR.
resultsOf 170 participants, 130 had asthma. Between 19% (32/170) and 29% (53/170) of samples were deemed to be of insufficient quality, depending on the quality criterion applied. Stratification of samples based on any of the sputum quality cut-offs resulted in significant differences in microbiota characteristics (all p < 0.05), with salivary α-amylase the least discriminant between microbiota of acceptable and unacceptable samples. The removal of 53 poor-quality samples based on ≥ 30% squamous cells identified a difference in the sputum microbiota by asthma status (p = 0.017) that was not evident otherwise, including significantly higher levels of Haemophilus and Gemella in asthma samples.
conclusionsUpper airway contamination of induced sputum samples from children is common. Exclusion of samples based on ≥ 30% squamous cells enables identification of asthma-airway microbiology relationships that are otherwise not apparent.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.