Figure 3.

Clinical and microbiome differences between gut-lung interactome–defined patient clusters. (A–D) Box plots illustrating differences in (A) exacerbation frequency, (B) disease severity (as FACED [FEV₁, age, chronic colonization, extension, and dyspnea] score) (48) and (C) radiological severity (as Reiff score) (49) between the derived identified patient clusters. Cluster 1 (high gut-lung interaction) is indicated in red, and cluster 2 (low gut-lung interaction) is indicated in green, as derived by spectral clustering of integrated gut-lung multibiomes. (D) Bar plots representing differentially abundant bacterial (light pink) and fungal (dark green) taxa of the lung (top) and gut (bottom) between the high and low gut-lung interaction clusters. Significantly increased taxa in cluster 1 (high gut-lung interaction) and cluster 2 (low gut-lung interaction) are highlighted as red and green bars, respectively. The x-axis represents the linear discriminant analysis (LDA) score, and the y-axis significant taxa with LDA score > 0. *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01. ns = nonsignificant.