Comparative Analysis of Salivary Bacterial Microbiome Diversity in Edentulous Infants and Their Mothers or Primary Care Givers Using Pyrosequencing

Abstract

Bacterial contribution to oral disease has been studied in young children, but there is a lack of data addressing the developmental perspective in edentulous infants. Our primary objectives were to use pyrosequencing to phylogenetically characterize the salivary bacterial microbiome of edentulous infants and to make comparisons against their mothers. Saliva samples were collected from 5 edentulous infants (mean age = 4.6±1.2 mo old) and their mothers or primary care givers (mean age = 30.8±9.5 y old). Salivary DNA was extracted, used to generate DNA amplicons of the V4–V6 hypervariable region of the bacterial 16S rDNA gene, and subjected to 454-pyrosequencing. On average, over 80,000 sequences per sample were generated. High bacterial diversity was noted in the saliva of adults [1012 operational taxonomical units (OTU) at 3% divergence] and infants (578 OTU at 3% divergence). Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Fusobacteria were predominant bacterial phyla present in all samples. A total of 397 bacterial genera were present in our dataset. Of the 28 genera different (P<0.05) between infants and adults, 27 had a greater prevalence in adults. The exception was Streptococcus, which was the predominant genera in infant saliva (62.2% in infants vs. 20.4% in adults; P<0.05). Veillonella, Neisseria, Rothia, Haemophilus, Gemella, Granulicatella, Leptotrichia, and Fusobacterium were also predominant genera in infant samples, while Haemophilus, Neisseria, Veillonella, Fusobacterium, Oribacterium, Rothia, Treponema, and Actinomyces were predominant in adults. Our data demonstrate that although the adult saliva bacterial microbiome had a greater OTU count than infants, a rich bacterial community exists in the infant oral cavity prior to tooth eruption. Streptococcus, Veillonella, and Neisseria are the predominant bacterial genera present in infants. Further research is required to characterize the development of oral microbiota early in life and identify environmental factors that impact colonization and oral and gastrointestinal disease risk.

Human Microbiota Characterization in the Course of Renal Transplantation

“…It is therefore conceivable that the observed microbiota changes in posttransplant compared to pretransplant samples are reflective of an improved health state as patients stabilize or recover organ function after transplantation. However, since antimicrobial therapy is part of the standard posttransplant regimen, the observed changes could also result from these medications, which would be supported by the observation that all of the bacterial groups showing decreases in relative abundance are also found at relatively high numbers in healthy patients, including, for example, Haemophilus and Neisseria species in the oral microbiota (27).…”

Leptotrichia species in human infections II

“…Leptotrichia species were also isolated from bronchoalveolar lavage fluid, and patients with leukocytosis, hypoxemia, and dyspnea [24]. Further, Leptotrichia species were recovered from healthy patients with oral cancer, premalignant oral lesion [18,28,33,56,91], edentulous infants [29], human vaginal fluid of sexually active and inactive individuals [30,32], HIV-seropositive and -seronegative patients [46], pancreatic cancer patients [18,66], black pigmented stain caries patients [63], and patients with halitosis (Table 2) [42,65,81,82]. Besides, Leptotrichia species were isolated from the blood [4,5,22,74], the amniotic fluid of a patient with a wound and respiratory difficulties [4], breast milk of obese women with gestational diabetes and normal weight [36], oral samples of a patient with new-onset rheumatoid arthritis [20], oral lichen planus patients [88], and even from fermenting Lees liquor [39].…”

Non-pathogenic Neisseria: members of an abundant, multi-habitat, diverse genus

“…A more recent study using NGS also observed the same trend; saliva samples were collected from five oedentulous infants aged 3-6 months and their mothers or primary carers. More than 200 genera were identified in infants, with Neisseria being one of the predominant genera (Cephas et al, 2011). In addition to the oral cavity, the composition of the nasopharyngeal microbiome has been investigated by barcoding pyrosequencing in 96 healthy children of 18 months of age (Bogaert et al, 2011).…”