Fig 4. Variations in taxonomic composition by clinical variable.

Differences in taxonomic family composition between patients that experienced an outcome of COPD exacerbation and those that did not. City of hospital site was used as a co-variate to correct for taxonomic families that varied between hospital sites. Differentially abundant families are represented as boxplot graphs, coloured by taxon, shown in the shared legend. The COPD exacerbation diagnosis is displayed on the x-axis, and relative abundances are plotted along the y-axis.