Longitudinal stability of microbiome according to asthma severity
The severe asthmatics who came for follow-up visit at one year are shown in Table S1 . The dominance of Haemophilus influenzae orTropheryma whipplei persisted in the severe asthma subjects: 3 out of 4 subjects with Haemophilus influenza e dominance at baseline and 2 out of 3 subjects with Tropheryma whippleidominance at baseline maintained this prevalence at longitudinal follow-up (Figure 5 ). The same trend was observed at the genus-level (Figure S6A ).
There was no shift in α-diversity (Figure 5B ) or β-diversity (Figure 5C ) of airway microbiome in severe asthma cases analysed at the species or genus level. Similar results were seen at the genus level in α-diversity (Figure S6B ) or β-diversity (Figure S6C ). Moreover, Mann-Whitney U test with Holm correction between paired and non-paired groups showed that genus- and species-level (Figures 5D & S6D ) microbiome compositional similarity between paired samples that were from the same subject was significantly higher compared to that from other possible sample pairings.