Variations in Oral Microbiota Composition Are Associated With a Risk of Throat Cancer

• Published in: Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology Vol. 9; p. 205
• Main Authors: Wang, Lili, Yin, Gaofei, Guo, Ying, Zhao, Yaqi, Zhao, Meng, Lai, Yunyun, Sui, Pengcheng, Shi, Taiping, Guo, Wei, Huang, Zhigang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Frontiers Media S.A 03.07.2019
• Subjects: 16S rRNA gene; Bacteria - classification; Bacteria - genetics; Biodiversity; Cellular and Infection Microbiology; DNA, Bacterial - genetics; Early Diagnosis; Female; High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; Humans; Male; microbiome; Microbiota - genetics; Middle Aged; next-generation sequencing; Oral Health; Pharyngeal Neoplasms - diagnosis; Pharyngeal Neoplasms - microbiology; Pharynx - microbiology; Phylogeny; Polyps; Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction; RNA, Ribosomal, 16S - genetics; Saliva - microbiology; Sequence Analysis, DNA; throat cancer; early diagnosis; oral health; next-generation sequencing; microbiome; throat cancer; 16S rRNA gene
• ISSN: 2235-2988; 2235-2988
• DOI: 10.3389/fcimb.2019.00205

In this study, a next-generation sequencing strategy on 16 ribosomal RNA (16 rRNA) gene was employed to analyze 70 oral samples from 32 patients with throat cancer, nine patients with vocal cord polyp, and 29 healthy individuals (normal controls). Using this strategy, we demonstrated, for the first time, that the salivary microbiota of cancer patients were significantly different from those of patients with a polyp and healthy individuals. We observed that the beta diversity of the cancer group was divergent from both the normal and polyp groups, while alpha-diversity indices such as the Chao1 estimator ( = 8.1e-05), Simpson ( = 0.0045), and Shannon ( = 0.0071) were significantly reduced in cancer patients compared with patients containing a polyp and normal healthy individuals. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and Kruskal-Wallis test analyses and real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) verification test revealed that the genera , and were significantly enriched in the throat cancer group compared with the vocal cord polyp and normal control groups (score value >2). Finally, diagnostic models based on putatively important constituent bacteria were constructed with 87.5% accuracy [area under the curve (AUC) = 0.875, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.695-1]. In summary, in this study we characterized, for the first time, the oral microbiota of throat cancer patients without smoking history. We speculate that these results will help in the pathogenic mechanism and early diagnosis of throat cancer.