Integrated large-scale analysis of disease signatures in oral microbiomes

Abstract

Oral health is essential for overall human well-being, with oral diseases impacting 3.5 billion people worldwide every year (WHO Report 2022). Oral microbiome is considered as the 2nd most abundant human body site with respect to microbial composition and diversity. Earlier studies have shown the variation in the oral microbiome in case of different oral and systemic diseases. This variation is associated with variety of endogenous and exogenous factors which include host lifestyle, drug use, host status, environmental factors etc. However, a complete understanding of the alterations of the oral microbiome across diseases (along with shared disease signatures, if any) is still lacking. To investigate this, we have done an extensive meta-analysis of 17,031 Oral Microbiomes encompassing 48 different study cohorts and 29 diseases from 24 different countries across the globe, where we have analysed study-specific effects and the association of diseases with the oral microbiome. We observe that approximately 71% of studies have a significant association of oral alterations with different diseases. However, the age-specific variations in the oral microbial community play a key role as a confounder of these association patterns. We identify variabilities in the number of disease-gained and disease-lost across different diseases, and finally, we identify a shared signature of generic disease signature across oral microbiomes from different studies.