Table 3.

Characteristics of the samples from the studies selected for the meta-analysis relative to the groups used as cases and controls (”healthy”, ”stable”, ”exacerbated” and, when exacerbated and stable patients are mixed in one group or when the disease status is not reported, ”diseased”)

Study	Mean ± SD alpha-diversity index  (sample size)
	Shannon				Chao1				Simpson
	Healthy	Stable	Exacerbated	Diseased	Healthy	Stable	Exacerbated	Diseased	Healthy	Stable	Exacerbated	Diseased
Goleva et al. [28]	$2.8\pm 0.7(12)$	$2.8\pm 0.5(39)$			$21\pm 7(12)$	$26\pm 8(39)$
Denner et al. [29]	$3.5\pm 0.3(19)$			$3.5\pm 0.2(39)$	$158\pm 32(19)$			$143\pm 36(39)$	$0.92\pm 0.02(19)$			$0.91\pm 0.02(39)$
Sverrild et al. [30]	3.8 ± 0.3 (10)			4.1 ± 0.2 (23)
Liu et al. [31]	$5.6\pm 0.7(29)$	$6.0\pm 1.1(116)$
Li et al. [32]	$2.8\pm 0.5(15)$	$2.8\pm 0.4(24)$	$2.8\pm 0.5(25)$		$181\pm 37(15)$	$243\pm 149(24)$	$229\pm 162(25)$		$0.15\pm 0.12(15)$	$0.13\pm 0.08(24)$	$0.12\pm 0.03(25)$
Marri et al. [33]	$2.5\pm 0.3(10)$	$2.8\pm 0.3(10)$
Huang et al. [34]	3.3 ± 0.6 (16)			2.9 ± 0.4 (22)	571 ± 464 (16)			271 ± 50 (22)	0.11 ± 0.06  (16)			0.13 ± 0.06 (22)
Munck et al. [35]	2.7 ± 0.3 (20)			3.2 ± 0.3 (44)
Park et al. [36]	3.5 ± 0.7 (12)	2.4 ± 1.0 (18)			274 ± 147 (12)	173 ± 101 (18)
Lee et al. [20]	1.7 ± 0.6 (20)	2.1 ± 1.2  (59)			284 ± 208 (20)	351 ± 383 (59)
Erb-Downward et al. [37]	3.6 ± 1.1 (10)	3.1 ± 1.6  (4)
Pragman et al. [38]	0.5 ± 0.4 (10)	1.6 ± 0.9 (22)							0.27 ± 0.24 (10)	0.61 ± 0.28 (22)
Einarsson et al. [39]	2.6 ± 0.5 (19)	1.9 ± 0.6 (18)
Kim et al. [40]	2.1 ± 0.6 (13)			1.8 ± 0.8 (13)					0.3 ± 0.2 (13)			0.4 ± 0.2 (13)
Feigelman et al. [25]	3.1 ± 0.1 (4)			1.5 ± 0.8 (4)
Millares et al. [41]		$2.9\pm 1.0(8)$	$3.3\pm 1.1(8)$			$138\pm 54(8)$	$126\pm 31(8)$
Wang et al. [21]	$6.2\pm 1.4(27)$	$5.5\pm 2.3(98)$
Park et al. [36]	3.5 ± 0.7 (12)	2.9 ± 1.0  (17)			274 ± 147 (12)	203 ± 127 (17)
Pletcher et al. [42]	$4.2\pm 0.9(17)$			$2.2\pm 1.1(9)$
Soret et al. [43]	$0.8\pm 0.6(16)$		$1.4\pm 3.4(17)$		$30\pm 15(16)$		$26\pm 9(17)$		$0.30\pm 0.16(16)$		$0.70\pm 2.21(17)$
Narayanamurthy et al. [44]	$2.6\pm 0.1(8)$			$1.7\pm 0.8(16)$	$134\pm 11(8)$			$103\pm 18(16)$
Filkins et al. [26]										$0.64\pm 0.15(22)$	$0.40\pm 0.48(13)$
Coburn et al. [45]		$4.1\pm 1.2(100)$	$3.4\pm 1.6(27)$
Carmody et al. [27]		$1.3\pm 0.6(34)$	$1.4\pm 0.6(34)$
Byun et al. [46]		$4.6\pm 12.9(8)$	$0.5\pm 0.5(6)$							$3.60\pm 6.57(8)$	$1.77\pm 1.30(6)$

Values in bold are as reported in the original papers, plain text values were estimated from the quantiles in the papers