Differences in microbial community distribution between stable and severe decliner groups.

<p>Bacterial taxonomic profiling revealed differences between stable and severe decliner communities. a) Standardized abundances of two OTUs (OTU 2 and 36) showing a different distribution between patient groups. b) Differences between the two most represented oligotypes identified for OTU 2. Standardize abundances were calculated as: [x - mean(x)]/sd(x), where "sd" is the standard deviation and “mean” is the mean value. As a result, all OTUs have equal means and standard deviations (0 and 1, respectively) but different ranges. Reported p values were obtained with a Wilcoxon signed-rank test.