Characterization of the lung microbiome in sarcoidosis and healthy individuals with respect to host genotype

Sarcoidosis is a complex granulomatous disease with unknown etiology. Beside genetic factors like ANXA11, BTNL2 and HLA genes, an infectious agent has always been hypothesized to trigger the development of sarcoidosis, especially due to the pathological similarity between Sarcoidosis and mycobacterial infections like tuberculosis and leprosy. With usage of new sequencing technologies, enabling detection of unculturable bacteria, deep analysis of the sarcoidosis lung microbiome might highlight new risk factors for sarcoidosis progression.

We hypothesize that the development of sarcoidosis correlates with a certain microbial composition in the lung, which is influenced by the host genotype. Therefore, in the presented project we systematically characterize the lung microbiome of sarcoidosis patients, IPF patients and healthy controls using Next-Generation-Sequencing technology. The microbial profiles are further correlated with genotype data of the same individuals. The specific aims of this study are i) the definition of a sarcoidosis-specific lung microbiome, ii) the analysis of potential host genotype-lung microbiome correlations in the context of sarcoidosis and iii) to which extent this correlation might be relevant for sarcoidosis manifestation and progression. Preliminary results show the presence of bacteria in the lungs of sarcoidosis patients indicating a sarcoidosis associated microbiome.