Bacterial aerobic respiration is a major consumer of oxygen in sputum from patients with acute lower respiratory tract infection

Peter Østrup Jensen*, Pernille Olsen, Arnold Matovu Dungu, Gertrud Baunbæk Egelund, Andreas Vestergaard Jensen, Pernille Ravn, Birgitte Lindegaard, Frederik Boëtius Hertz, Thomas Bjarnsholt, Daniel Faurholt-Jepsen, Mette Kolpen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Bacterial aerobic respiration may determine the outcome of antibiotic treatment in experimental settings, but the clinical relevance of bacterial aerobic respiration for the outcome of antibiotic treatment has not been tested. Therefore, we hypothesized that bacterial aerobic respiration is higher in sputum from patients with acute lower respiratory tract infections (aLRTI), than in sputum from patients with chronic LRTI (cLRTI), where the bacteria persist despite antibiotic treatment. The bacterial aerobic respiration was determined according to the dynamics of the oxygen (O2) concentration in sputum from aLRTI patients (n = 52). This result was evaluated by comparison to previously published data from patients with cLRTI. O2 consumption resulting in anoxic zones was more frequent in sputum with detected bacterial pathogens. The bacterial aerobic respiration in aLRTI sputum approximated 55% of the total O2 consumption, which was significantly higher than previously published for cLRTI. The bacterial aerobic respiration in sputum was higher in aLRTI patients than previously seen in cLRTI patients, indicating the presence of bacteria with a sensitive physiology in aLRTI. These variations in bacterial physiology between aLRTI patients and cLRTI patients may contribute the huge difference in treatment success between the two patient groups.

Original languageEnglish
JournalAPMIS
ISSN0903-4641
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors. APMIS published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Scandinavian Societies for Pathology, Medical Microbiology and Immunology.

Keywords

  • bacterial infections
  • pneumonia

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