The Oral Bacterial Communities of Children with Well-Controlled HIV Infection and without HIV Infection

Abstract

The oral microbial community (microbiota) plays a critical role in human health and disease. Alterations in the oral microbiota may be associated with disorders such as gingivitis, periodontitis, childhood caries, alveolar osteitis, oral candidiasis and endodontic infections. In the immunosuppressed population, the spectrum of potential oral disease is even broader, encompassing candidiasis, necrotizing gingivitis, parotid gland enlargement, Kaposi’s sarcoma, oral warts and other diseases. Here, we used 454 pyrosequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA genes to examine the oral microbiome of saliva, mucosal and tooth samples from HIV-positive and negative children. Patient demographics and clinical characteristics were collected from a cross-section of patients undergoing routine dental care. Multiple specimens from different sampling sites in the mouth were collected for each patient. The goal of the study was to observe the potential diversity of the oral microbiota among individual patients, sample locations, HIV status and various dental characteristics. We found that there were significant differences in the microbiome among the enrolled patients, and between sampling locations. The analysis was complicated by uneven enrollment in the patient cohorts, with only five HIV-negative patients enrolled in the study and by the rapid improvement in the health of HIV-infected children between the time the study was conceived and completed. The generally good oral health of the HIV-negative patients limited the number of dental plaque samples that could be collected. We did not identify significant differences between well-controlled HIV-positive patients and HIV-negative controls, suggesting that well-controlled HIV-positive patients essentially harbor similar oral flora compared to patients without HIV. Nor were significant differences in the oral microbiota identified between different teeth or with different dental characteristics. Additional studies are needed to better characterize the oral microbiome in children and those with poorly-controlled HIV infections.

Oral bacteriome of HIV‐1‐infected children from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Next‐generation DNA sequencing analysis

“…The results of the present study are in conflict with those of Goldberg et al, , Noguera‐Julian et al, and Starr et al, . The reason for this apparent conflict could lie in the fact that different populations were studied.…”

“…A number of authors have studied the oral microbiota of HIV‐1‐infected individuals using gene amplicon sequencing (Beck et al, ; Dang et al, ; Goldberg et al, ; Kistler, Arirachakaran, Poovorawan, Dahlen, & Wade, ; Li et al, ; Noguera‐Julian et al, ; Presti et al, ; Starr et al, ); however, only two papers have been published regarding the oral microbiome of HIV‐1‐infected children (Goldberg et al, ; Starr et al, ). These studies were carried out with HIV‐1‐infected children from the United States, by the use of 454 pyrosequencing (Goldberg et al, ) or Illumina platform on a MiSeq (Starr et al, ).…”

Oral microbiome in HIV-associated periodontitis

“…A small study in children with only 5 HIV-negative controls found no evident differences in the oral microbiome composition between well-controlled HIV-positive and HIV-negative children. [17] In comparison, 15 subjects with AIDS attending HIV clinics in China showed significant increases in several bacteria, and a distinct salivary bacterial profile between necrotic and chronic PD. [18] Using a microbial microarray, there were significant differences in the salivary bacterial composition between HIV-positive subjects before and after ART initiation and between them and HIV-negative adults.…”

HIV-induced immunosuppression is associated with colonization of the proximal gut by environmental bacteria

“…Clinically, our knowledge of opportunistic pathogens in relation to HIV-related proximal gut problems is rather limited, and clinical signs and symptoms alone rarely suggest a specific etiology. Besides the distal gut microbiome, high-throughput sequencing has been used to examine the effects of HIV infection on the microbiomes in the vagina [29–31], lung [32], mouth [33, 34], Semen [35], and anus [36] as well as in normally sterile body sites such as the brain [37] and blood [38, 39], but not in the proximal gut. Unlike its distal counterpart, the status of microbiome in the proximal gut in HIV infection was only examined recently by analysis of gastric juice samples from only two HIV patients [40].…”