BACKGROUND: Oral and topical corticosteroids, and antibiotics form the mainstay medical treatment of chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS). Clinical outcomes vary depending on the chosen therapy, resident microbiome and disease phenotype. We conducted a double- blinded, placebo-controlled Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) to investigate effects of medical therapy on clinical outcomes and associated microbiome shifts. METHODOLOGY: Fifty eligible patients (CRS with and without polyps) were treated for 3 weeks after randomisation into 3 arms: na- mely oral prednisolone, topical budesonide irrigations and oral doxycycline; each with appropriate placebo. Clinical scoring and microbiome swabs were performed on enrolment, at treatment completion and 3-weeks post treatment completion. Microbiome analysis was performed using the llumina-MiSeq next generation sequencing platform and QIME-2 pipeline. RESULTS: Significant improvement in clinical scores was observed in prednisolone and budesonide arms at treatment completion but not with antibiotic. Sub-group analysis showed more pronounced effects in patients with polyposis. Corynebacterium and Staphylococcus species predominated, with variable bacterial relative abundance among different treatments at all time-points. The only significant microbiome finding was an increase in bacterial diversity in topical budesonide group immediately after treatment, which returned to baseline 3-weeks post treatment. CONCLUSION: Clinical improvement was significant with oral and topical steroid but not empirical antibiotic. Although there were some associated microbiome changes with the various treatments, we could not ascertain the consistency of these and whether they do have a clinical significance at all.
Experiment 1
Subjects
- Location of subjects
- Finland
- Host species Species from which microbiome was sampled. Contact us to have more species added.
- Homo sapiens
- Body site Anatomical site where microbial samples were extracted from according to the Uber Anatomy Ontology
- Middle nasal meatus Middle meatus,Middle meatus of the nose,Middle nasal meatus,middle nasal meatus
- Group 0 name Corresponds to the control (unexposed) group for case-control studies
- Healthy controls-without polyps
- Group 1 name Corresponds to the case (exposed) group for case-control studies
- Patients with chronic rhinosinusitis
- Group 1 definition Diagnostic criteria applied to define the specific condition / phenotype represented in the case (exposed) group
- CRS patients diagnosed as per the criteria outlined in the Euro-
pean Position Paper on Rhinosinusitis and Nasal Polyps (EPOS)
2012
- Group 0 sample size Number of subjects in the control (unexposed) group
- 50
- Group 1 sample size Number of subjects in the case (exposed) group
- 50
- Antibiotics exclusion Number of days without antibiotics usage (if applicable) and other antibiotics-related criteria used to exclude participants (if any)
- Patients who were on any oral steroid, topical steroid or oral antibiotic in a
6-weeks period prior to enrollment, below the age of 18, had a history of
sinus surgery, documented doxycycline or steroid allergy,
using CYP450 inhibitors, immunosuppression, uncontrolled
diabetes, were all excluded.
Lab analysis
- Sequencing type
- 16S
- 16S variable region One or more hypervariable region(s) of the bacterial 16S gene
- V3-V4
- Sequencing platform Manufacturer and experimental platform used for quantifying microbial abundance
- Illumina
Statistical Analysis
- Statistical test
- ANOVA
- Significance threshold p-value or FDR threshold used for differential abundance testing (if any)
- 0.05
