Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) has a different composition of microbes in their lower airways as compared to normal people or patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), reveals a study by a team of medical researchers at University of Bergen. The study, published in a preprint version in medRxiv, found that the lower airways microbiome and antimicrobial peptides in patients with IPF differ from patients with COPD. The researchers pointed out that the popular conception was that the lower airways are sterile in IPF patients, but the new findings of different composition of microbes shows that there is greater similarity between the microbiome of the oral cavity and of the lower airways in healthy controls compared with those with COPD. The researchers explained that micro aspiration could potentially be the cause of the disturbed microbiome seen in IPF.