Abstract

Sepsis is associated with acute respiratory distress syndrome, which has a significant impact on the prognosis of patients. Several studies have shown that the microbiota plays a significant role in sepsisinduced acute respiratory distress syndrome, but the relationship between the microbiota and sepsisinduced acute respiratory distress syndrome is not fully understood. We conducted a case-control and single-center study in 19 sepsis-induced acute respiratory distress syndrome patients and 36 sepsis-noninduced acute respiratory distress syndrome patients to investigate the clinical features and microbiota expression. There were 55 subjects enrolled, 19 of whom suffered acute respiratory distress syndrome due to sepsis. A significant increase in the abundance of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, leptospiral virus, Cytomegalovirus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Candida albicans, Escherichia coli, Epstein-Barr virus and Staphylococcus aureus. Besides, expressions of peripheral T lymphocytes (cluster of differentiation 3⁺, cluster of differentiation 4⁺ and cluster of differentiation 3⁺, cluster of differentiation 8⁺) was much higher in the sepsis-induced acute respiratory distress syndrome group than that in the sepsis non-induced acute respiratory distress syndrome group. The acute physiology and chronic health evaluation II scores, duration of mechanical ventilation and mortality with 28 d and 90 d were much higher in the sepsis-induced acute respiratory distress syndrome group. Patients with sepsis-induced acute respiratory distress syndrome had worse clinical outcomes and a higher expression of peripheral T lymphocytes, as well as the relative abundance of microbiota dysbiosis.