Initial acquisition and succession of the cystic fibrosis lung microbiome is associated with disease progression in infants and preschool children
Fig 5
Cluster type is associated with bacterial density and clinical measurements of disease.
(A) Age (years), (B) bacterial density (16S rRNA gene copies/ml BAL; average background signal denoted by dashed line), (C) total immune cell counts (TCC)/ml BAL, (D) total neutrophils/ml BAL, (E) IL-8 (picograms)/ml BAL, (F) bronchial wall thickening, and (G) bronchiectasis scores show significant changes based on cluster type. Significance between groups (C1: green, C2: blue, C3: red) were determined through Tukey’s HSD where single, double, and triple asterisks denote significance below 0.05, 0.005, and 0.0005, respectively. Outliers are defined as values above or below 1.5 times the difference in interquartile range above and below the quartiles within each group. Additional statistical analyses on these data can be found in S1 Table.