No studies have examined the relationships between bacterial communities along sites of
the upper aerodigestive tract of an individual subject. Our objective was to perform an …

Novel culture-independent techniques have recently demonstrated that the lower respiratory
tract, historically considered sterile in health, contains diverse communities of microbes: the …

Although the notion that “the normal lung is free from bacteria” remains common in textbooks,
it is virtually always stated without citation or argument. The lungs are constantly exposed …

… Correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed to Robert P. Dickson, MD,
Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine, University of Michigan Health System, 6220 MSRB III/…

Sepsis and the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) are major causes of mortality
without targeted therapies. Although many experimental and clinical observations have …

Racial Bias in Pulse Oximetry The question of whether pulse oximetry measurements vary
according to race has not been adequately studied, despite the wide use of this measure in …

Inhaled oxygen, although commonly administered to patients with respiratory disease, causes
severe lung injury in animals and is associated with poor clinical outcomes in humans. …

The principles of respiratory microbiology are being re-evaluated and re-written, starting
with the debunked myth of lung sterility. The “terrain” of the respiratory ecosystem differs—…

Rationale: The lung microbiome is spatially heterogeneous in advanced airway diseases,
but whether it varies spatially in health is unknown. We postulated that the primary …

Culture-independent microbiological techniques have shown a previously unappreciated
complexity to the bacterial microbiome of the respiratory tract that forces reconsideration of the …