Oral microbiome development during childhood: an ecological succession influenced by postnatal factors and associated with tooth decay

Abstract

Information on how the oral microbiome develops during early childhood and how external factors influence this ecological process is scarce. We used high-throughput sequencing to characterize bacterial composition in saliva samples collected at 3, 6, 12, 24 months and 7 years of age in 90 longitudinally followed children, for whom clinical, dietary and health data were collected. Bacterial composition patterns changed through time, starting with "early colonizers", including Streptococcus and Veillonella; other bacterial genera such as Neisseria settled after 1 or 2 years of age. Dental caries development was associated with diverging microbial composition through time. Streptococcus cristatus appeared to be associated with increased risk of developing tooth decay and its role as potential biomarker of the disease should be studied with species-specific probes. Infants born by C-section had initially skewed bacterial content compared with vaginally delivered infants, but this was recovered with age. Shorter breastfeeding habits and antibiotic treatment during the first 2 years of age were associated with a distinct bacterial composition at later age. The findings presented describe oral microbiota development as an ecological succession where altered colonization pattern during the first year of life may have long-term consequences for child´s oral and systemic health.

Amino Sugars Modify Antagonistic Interactions between Commensal Oral Streptococci and Streptococcus mutans

“…As shown here, S. cristatus is clearly capable of disrupting the persistence of S. mutans by producing large amounts of H 2 O 2 and potentially reducing the production of mutacins. Some recent reports have indicated that S. cristatus could be associated with severe early childhood caries; however, more research is needed to corroborate these findings (52,53). Similarly, S. oralis BCC02 appeared highly inhibitory to S. mutans in biofilms, at least partly due to being an efficient H 2 O 2 producer.…”

Diversity and temporal dynamics of primate milk microbiomes

“…Nutrient content is largely stable in mature milk intra‐individually (Garcia et al, ; Hinde et al, ; Power et al, ), and we found no association of nutrient content predicting changes in the microbiome over time. Instead these changes over time may reflect EMT moving different bacteria from the mother's gut to the mammary gland and/or changes in the infant oral microbiome over time (Dzidic et al, ) that changes which bacteria colonize milk through retrograde flow during suction (Ascinar et al, ; Biagi et al, ).…”

The salivary microbiota in health and disease

“…Accordingly, the composition of SM has been reported to differentiate between dentate and edentulous individuals [28], and full-mouth extraction impacts on SM [29]. Furthermore, SM is affected by dental developmental stages [30,31], and early life development of SM is a coordinated process, influenced by ecological perturbations such as mode of delivery, breastfeeding length and antibiotic treatment [32].…”